Andrey Levkin. New examination

New examination
Andrey Levkin

Publication date: April 7, 2000

For some kind of anniversary of net culture

To his wife Gorny with gratitude for what he did

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It is already difficult to say what net culture has led to - because this matter completely immerses the person who is related to it. From which, in fact, it follows that a) it developed as a real culture, b) it led to something and changed something.

In order not to engage in petty memories of individual achievements of a new kind of human activity, we will act specifically and without being scattered into various areas of application of net-culture. The main thing in this story is that net culture shaped the New Expertise. That is, it has brought into being a certain clearing in relation to which a new assessment of reality is possible. Accordingly, there are both mechanisms and methods that allow this examination to be carried out, as well as people capable of doing this.

Of course, the additional beauty of this story is that no one produced anything special in this direction. That is, the fact is that net culture has created a new system of relations between objects, a description language, a field onto which the description is projected. Taken together, all this constitutes the New Expertise. Here it is quite appropriate to point out the first example of this expertise - “network expertise”, if you like. Of course, this is “Migratory Flies” by May Ivanovich Mukhin.

I’m not joking here at all and I’m not taking this very New Expertise to a funny level. Everything is quite serious: the entire distance located between the two projects - “Flies” and the “expert channel of GDP” of the March elections, is filled primarily with the search for New Expertise methods (what else is it - all these eternal online reviews?).

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There is nothing surprising in all this, given that the net culture itself arose on the basis of a fair variety of textures and knowledge, sufficient for its formation as a kind of media - in the literal sense of the word: an environment, a layer - allowing for conversation. There is a certain consolidation of the field, the formation of its internal meaning, not so much, but positions that allow analysis.

Accordingly, the process of self-expression of online people is well implemented on the network and in projects directed outward - that’s the same policy. Moreover, this is clearly not the kind of expertise that people are used to off-line, which is why the off-line wants novelty, but by inertia wants some kind of familiar, but already impossible discourse. Off-line figurines, the net environment makes it possible to analyze anything, at least on its own internal grounds. Well, two new things cannot happen at the same time.

It is obvious that the very revival of political sites in the past year was a direct consequence of the emergence of a new description language caused by intranet affairs. Of course, in this case, the political angle is nothing more than an example, but texturally it is quite convincing (especially for the same off-line). It is obvious that there is a certain shift in attitudes towards reality. At the same time, it turns out to be constructive. That is, it has consequences.

Signs of constructiveness are evident - for example, the game of seriousness and frivolity, which, of course, turns out to be simply a way of speech that has moved away from “paper” clichés, and this already makes it possible to master reality in a new way. In addition, in the net culture, assessments are made by people with a fundamentally different type of consciousness than in the offline (which does not at all imply that they are somehow smarter - newsgroups and forums will not allow you to say this). Accordingly, network expertise in relation to offline will always be different: for offline this is madness, but for online it is a temptation that finds a place for its discourse in the same forums and guestbooks.

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It is quite difficult to evaluate the system of parameters of the New Expertise - precisely because we are not talking about a created expert system, but about a field that has formed by itself. The evidence in such cases is usually only indirect.

For example, what is happening with the media on the network (the fact that every media is an expert device is understandable). The changes in the description language are obvious - it seems to be conversational, but not conversational either. As if freer and more cheeky - but no, not cheeky, although free. That is, he is already quite comfortable in normal network products. It is obvious that “Gazeta.ru” , “Lenta.ru” , “SMI.ru” write in a language that we do not translate directly onto paper, and this is not at all the language of some vagueness and irresponsibility, but a completely concrete new adequacy. Of course, without the net culture, no online journalism would have arisen.

The same applies to RJ as a magazine, which is absolutely not possible offline. The same option will be provided by Kuritsyn literature , which is absolutely not possible in the form of a project outside the network, while at the same time it is clearly a literary project.

In fact, the fact that it is impossible to translate developed online media back onto paper - given the presence of a new language of the environment - is quite insignificant. What can we say about the mere little things like the fundamental absence of requirements for the length of the message, which allows you to operate with it quite freely. Or about the absence of a deadline, which greatly determines the same “paper” and, accordingly, strains the local discoursers either once a day, or once a week, or once a month. Or that there is down.ru on the Internet , which can help eliminate a fair number of bad habits of journalists.

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So, net culture has provided, created, and found a space of magic - in which, in a completely new version, it is possible to carry out a real examination of the most diverse objects. Magic - because magic is a clearing + expertise: because if someone moves something in this clearing, the consequences will not hesitate to arise.