Rhizomes & Reality

Mark has made an interesting post over at K-punk on the rhizomatic practise of blogging. To be honest I haven't actually read much of the 'professional' bloggers. Probably because most of them are music blogs and while I am interested in music I am far more interested in digressions, aphorisms, ramblings and nonsensical glue. I've found it interesting to see how my blog has developed over the past few months; I've had emails from people not immediately connected with the 'network' that have spawned offshoots in a different directions. I've found links through other blogs to new blogs that I love to read. I can follow strange and labyrinthine paths that twist and turn and diverge and create. I find the spatial aspect of it particularly interesting. Those in Australia and Canada become as close as those in Newcastle or London, space is destroyed through the medium of our ever fluctuating and widening network.

I came across this particular network not through the usual suspects of blissblog & woebot but on a random espionage mission to find out some information on Warwick Uni before I decided to go there. That's how I first came across undercurrent and k-punk. People find me through strange internet searches such as 'Jon Snow nice tie' and 'Troy sex.' There's never any start or finish, only a middle that continues to blast things off in different directions. If one blog 'dies' the network will continue to offshoot new and exciting branches, There might be sadness over someone leaving but it's not the end for there is neither a beginning nor an end to it.

The reality of the blogging rhizome is fascinating as well. I am only properly acquainted with one other blogger that I know of, who sometimes seems quite far on the rhizome yet sometimes close. Strange that. Yet my thoughts are 'published' more frequently upon this network than they are ever communicated through speech and so the network becomes as real as anyone who I might be able to touch with the tips of my fingers. I sometimes wonder if what people post is a true reflection of who they are but then I realise that it doesn't matter, because within this network, this reality, it is what they are. People without faces are given substance through the articulation of words. I don't know what any of you look like, but you are all there; you read me, I read you. Hello there you, whoever you are.

Perhaps this reality can touch that reality. Or are we different offshoots of the same reality blending together in some strange cyberspaceworldreality? I know for some of the 'bigger' bloggers such as Salam Pax there is a definite affect upon the world. But in the area of thought, of production and becomings might this phenomenon have an affect on the way we think? It's a wonderful way to come into contact with people and thoughts that one would not usually come across. I'm sure that I'll meet people at conferences and the like in the future but this seems more genuine and therefore more real. It will be interesting to see what happens in any case.

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