To:

Zcom_simple
Home » Z Blogs » Mitchell Szczepanczyk's Blog » Fiction and making activist vision tangible

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

583206

Mitchell Szczepanczyk's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/mitchellszczepanczyk
Bio: Mitchell Szczepanczyk is a software developer, media producer, political activist, aspiring polyglot, degree-holding linguist, and game show aficionado. A son of Polish immigrants and a native of M... (More)

All Szczepanczyk Blogs

Recent Szczepanczyk Content

Znetarticle_icon ZNet Articles
Zmagarticle_icon ZMag Articles
Zcommentary_icon ZCommentaries
Zblogpost_icon Blog Posts

Fiction and making activist vision tangible

By Mitchell Szczepanczyk at Jul 08, 2006

PDF Version

Printer Friendly Version
Change Text Size a- | A+

I recently learned the importance in the history of Poland of the writer Adam Mickiewicz -- whose 19th-century writings about a then-hypothetical Polish nation-state helped inspire the work which eventually would lead to the modern nation-state of Poland. That kind of makes sense, I suppose. It can be hard to get most people to rally behind an abstraction, like a nation state or a new kind of economy, especially when the work necessary to achieve that abstraction could take decades or centuries to achieve. But show people how that abstraction could very tangibly affect people's lives, particularly for the better, even when those affected people don't exist beyond the margins of a printed book, and the task to rally could become much easier. I suspect that's one reason why the movement for a participatory society will need to have a literature of fictive imagination. Even when the blueprints of a better society are clear, logical, complete, and well-written, they won't have the visceral punch of a story set in that society. Besides, it's far easier to adapt a work of fiction for the screen than a work of theory. You might think of this as a call for aspiring short story writers, poets, novelists, and other creative types. Show us what we as activists are working for, and I suspect we might improve our chances to get there. Rather than being considered as a "waste" of time and resources, I wonder if this might be hugely influential for such a movement or movements. Part of the struggle for a better world, I suppose, is no doubt imagining and articulating what the better world might look like. We're seeing this already in the global justice movement.

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (1)

Person

Barbara Kingsolver comes to mind

By Kissenger, Clark at Jul 10, 2006 18:00 PM

I wonder if she is learned in the ways of the participatory movement.

I seem to recall a Z page on political fiction, though maybe it was just a featured site.

Reply this comment

Loading_border