on professionalism > 05/06/06

An issue that keeps on popping up is the question of amateurism and professionalism. It's an issue that keeps on returning on mailing lists on net.art and e-lit. And, in my work place, I cannot get beyond the feeling that what I'm doing is hobbyism. So, what is professionalism? And amateurism? And who's a professional? According to the quick defintions of OneLook.com a professional is: 1) a person engaged in one of the learned professions 2) an athlete who plays for pay 3) an authority qualified to teach apprentices In sense one and three, a professional is someone who has got a specific training. Originally the word denoted a person engaged in the learned professions as opposed to those in business and the industry. In sense two, the word professional differentiates between the one who is paid for what s/he does and the one who isn't, the amateur. And amateur is a derivation of amore, love. Thus, you cannot be a professional and love what you do nor can you be a professional if engaged in business or the industry. But, in everyday parlance, you can be professional, that is, like a professional even though it means businesslike or an amateur acting like a professional. So what about us who are engaged in the learned professions but not paid? Are we professionals, or professional? And if we love what we do, are we amateurs? All I know is that when I'm in the workplace I'm no professional even though I might act like a professional. When I go home, however, I go professional for the love of it, and unpaid.

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A decade at trAce > 15/11/05

A quilt of testimonies about the impact of technology on writing is being built at trAce as it celebrates its tenth anniversary.

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response (0) tagged: filed under: metatexts :: on writing

knowledge societies > 30/10/05

Looking at the UNESCO/WSIS Declaration of Principles for the internet, it becomes clear that the declaration rejects the bifurcation of, on the one, the information society as part of globalization on corporate terms and the subsequent increase in the digital divide and, on the other, knowledge societies that rely on affordable, free and open-source software and diversity in formats that enable global accessability regardless of the underlying technology.

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response (0) tagged: filed under: the Other :: cultural diversity and otherness

hypertext and the text > 22/07/05

In many ways, my vision and practice of hypertext link up with Roland Barthes’ theory of the text. This is not a ‘hard’ theory but rather a speculation held together by a continuous engagement with language, literature, photography and the pleasures of reading. Part of that theory, his differentiation between work and text has become a mantra for many hypertext critics in that Barthes here differentiats between work, which is a closed linear narrative, and texts that are open-ended and decentered.

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response (0) tagged: digital writing filed under: on writing