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Eighteen Years Under One Banner: The BolesBlogs Constellation at Thirty

Today marks the eighteenth anniversary of the Boles Blogs Network gathering under a single domain. That formation date is 2008. Writing under one of the network’s earlier names, however, began much earlier, in 1996, when Go Inside Magazine opened a small storefront on a web that still ran on dial tone and patience. The full arc now covers thirty years, fourteen blogs gathered under the BolesBlogs banner, a sister site on SquareSpace launched during the pandemic, and a stubborn argument about what publishing ought to feel like when the writer answers to nobody but the reader.

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The Conditions Were Not the Ones I Would Have Chosen

The cultural and political conditions under which my new book RelationShaping: Field Studies has been published are not the conditions I would have chosen for it. The book is an argument for sustained attention, long apprenticeship, and the slow acquisition of perceptual capacities that operate below the level of declarative description. It enters a culture where the dominant economic logic rewards short attention, fast turnover, and the substitution of automated outputs for the trained reading those outputs are supposed to approximate. I make the case anyway, because the case needs making, and because the people who recognize what the book is describing will recognize it whether the cultural moment is favorable or not.

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George and Jolene: Ten Sentence Story #119

George and Jolene met under odd circumstances and though they hit it off pretty well, there were always doubts about how long it could last.

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Panopticonic in the Washington City Paper

We love it when other news publications use the made-up word for this blog that is our title and purpose — Panopticonic — and we appreciate it when other powerful writers use our fake work in their print.  In the past, we have spread our love out to Andrew Leonard at Salon.com, and today, we celebrate Lydia DePillis at WashingtonCityPaper.com who took “Panopticonic” delight to print on January 25, 2011.

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Blubeekuss is Not a Word

One of the most annoying things in an allegedly literate human world is when a person invents a word for a word that already has meaning and context and then tries to press that definition into others in everyday use.  I’m not talking about words like “Memeingful” or “RelationShaping” or even the colossal “Panopticonic” — all of which have base value in an original colloquial expression — no, I’m talking about “words” like “Blubeekuss” that are made up to be a synonym for “bra.”

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Moving Movable Type 4 to Media Temple

UPDATE:  April 23, 2008.  This Urban Semiotic blog — and all of David W. Boles’ domains and blogs are now solely hosted by Pair Networks!  We will give you more information soon.  We are leaving this article online to protect the chain of understanding and we will update this space as necessary.

As you know, we recently moved this Urban Semiotic blog from WordPress to Movable Type 4.1 and we were hosted by the fine folks at Pair Networks. We are grateful for their previous love and support as we announce today yet another move of this blog – as well as RelationShaping.com and WordPunk.com – over to my pre-existing Media Temple 3.5 dv-Rage server and Movable Type Open Source 4.1.

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RelationShaping with David W. Boles

It is my honor and delight to announce today the creation of a new blog I’m writing — RelationShaping — where we try to give form and meaning to the way technology re-frames and transforms the human body in a relational universe.  Here’s our new semiotic semantic logo that serves our mission:  “The Spear of Technology Piercing the Body In Situ ->(” and we are grateful for your company.

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Join Me at RelationShaping

I’m pleased to announce a brand new blog that I think you’ll enjoy reading: David W. Boles’ RelationShaping ->(.  Here is our new, semiotic, logo that suggests the intention of the site:  How technology Re-Forms and Re-Shapes our Mind-Body memes in a Relational Universe and it indicates “The Spear of Technology Piercing the Body In Situ ->(.”

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Blessing the Google Cache

We love the Google and we are especially fond of the Google Cache feature that can salvage your work on the web that goes missing, is deleted, or is censored.

We recently found one of our Urban Semiotic articles was missing from publication.

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Grabbing and Pointing that Domain

Grabbing a good domain name is getting harder and harder as the pool of good .COM domain names thins in the raucous ether of everyone with an internet connection wanting a personalized website.

Not every domain name requires a website.  In fact, grabbing a domain and then pointing it to an existing website can be an effective means to propagate the idea of your brand beyond a single thought.

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