In Which First Sea Lord Puts the Beat Down on Them Internets

A reporter for the Seattle PI catches me in yet another moment of near total dread for the future.

It was an enjoyable interview, and Ms. Guzman, whose beat is them very self-same Internets, was open to the idea that the Internet and the digital age, in spite of being this amazing, powerful, democratizing library, is also an engine by which marketers and governments insert themselves into all aspects of our social relations. It commodifies - no other way to put it - the very love in our hearts, tending to displace the long years of direct socialization necessary to be fully human. Due to this and to the somewhat dilluting, bureaucratic nature of the technology, contemporary digital art, though far from empty, has been profoundly disappointing as the sheen of its newness wears off.

My quotes are not what I would have choosen; there I am, in the worst of all possible outcomes: Explaining a joke about Isengard.gov's name. Arrgh. No one to blame.

Quoted from NET NATIVE from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. By Monica Guzman.

There's "homey" and then there's Fremont Coffee Company "homey."

I half expected to see a yippy dog greet me at the door, little kids chasing each other through the rooms and the tumbling sounds of a not-so-distant clothes dryer when I stepped into the popular Fremont wi-fi spot.

But no; despite all appearances to the contrary, this is a place of business -- and study. It usually takes just one casual glance from the line at the counter to size up laptop density. Not here. I had to leave the anonymous comfort of said queue, peek through a couple of doorways and turn a couple of busy, curious heads just to get a sense of who was doing what.

I fought the urge to knock and ask permission to come in.

After I warmed my tummy with some morning glory chai, art teacher Jamie Bollenbach asked me to have a seat and let me in on his in-depth musings about the artistic and social perils of the Internet.

Bollenbach, 42, was doing three things online when I came by: 1) Looking at ticket prices for a possible trip to London, 2) Working on an entry to a group blog called Isengard.Gov and 3) Fiddling with his artwork on his personal blog, Bollenbach.blogspot.com.

A painting and drawing teacher at Highline Community College, Bollenbach is a painter himself. With paint and brush, mind you, not mouse and click. There's a lot of digitally created art in the world, but Bollenbach isn't about to negotiate with someone else's program to create his work.

"You're collaborating with everyone who built the software," he said. "Traditional materials -- they force you to engage in and be utterly responsible for what happens."

The Internet has done to art what it's done to everything else, he said. It's made it interchangeable, replaceable, anonymous. But on the other hand, the man does have his own art blog. Art shared online has new life, finds new ways to inspire. Bollenbach posts his paintings and his politics.

Isengard.Gov, located at eisengeiste.blogspot.com, has 10 contributors from here to Alaska, gets about 300 visits a day, and tackles all things political. It's named, of course, after one of the two evil towers in the "Lord of the Rings" series. "The idea is that evil people from Middle Earth have taken over the government," he said.

Apart from art's transformation online, Bollenbach is more concerned also about what might happen if Internet socialization becomes the norm.

"The Internet is a repository for freedom -- an illusion of substantive creativity. It becomes a play role rather than a substantive role," Bollenbach said.

He pointed to his brand new Dell. "This is manipulable," he said. "I had better relationships with people before the computer came along."