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My Site Early Noughties

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Inspired both by the digital revolution and the capacity for computers and the internet to 'electrify the word', I first created a website in the mid 90s (at some social space I don't even remember) and then uploaded my own website to demon around 1997. Of course this was genuine mixture of vanity and geekishness, but I still believed there was something more to this - something along the lines Walter Benjamin had described in his 'Work of Art in an Era of Mechanical Reproduction' - that this technology would transform the assembly line models of industry and culture, and enable more of us to become producers of culture rather than just consumers of it.

I first wrote this up in an Essay revising Benjamin's precepts for the New Statesman - The Work of Art in the Digital Domain.

But I was also inspired to turn that dry, function FAQ language of computing into something poetic. Of course, I wouldn't have been the first, and both the Italian Futurists and Soviet Constructivists had dabbled with the technocratic dreams of the early 20th Century, which clearly ended in catastrophe.

We still don't know where this dream will lead us: to Big Brother or, more insidiously, being 'entertained to death' like the inhabitants of Huxley's Brave New World.

Still, let's be optimistic. And despite his sudden and brutal end in Soviet Russia, let's be stirred by some of the words of Mayakovsky

 

THE FORCE OF WORDS

 

I know the force of words, their urgent calling,

not just words that draw polite applause

but words that even the dead find disturbing

break through their graves and walk abroa

d.

 

Though censors edit or publishers ignore them

words knuckle down, buckle under, cut through, keep on

hammering away till express trains come fawning

to lick poetry's rough hands, tame and meek.

 

I know the force of words, like a tissue flung

under dancers heels, they seem empty air,

 

but man is made of backbone, heart and tongue.

 

Version by Peter Jukes

 

Click below for the animated fish in the web version

Read 5954 times Last modified on %AM, %28 %178 %2014 %03:%Oct
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Links and Contact Details

Live Tweeting

Over the last few years I've created some attention with my live coverage of the phone hacking trial in London, the most expensive and longest concluded criminal trial in British history. There are various accounts and articles about this on the web, including a radio play. My Twitter feed can be found here, and a collation of evidence from the trial, and all my live tweets, can be found at my Fothom Wordpress blog. There's also a Flipboard magazine and a Facebook Page. My Klout ranking is here.

More Journalism and Books

Various journalistic articles of mine are scattered throughout the web. There's some kind of portfolio at Muckrack. The most extensive reporting is for the Daily Beast and Newsweek, but there's more at the New Statesman, the New Republic, Aeon etc. I have two non fiction books published in the last year: The Fall of the House of Murdoch, available through Unbound or Amazon, and Beyond Contempt: the Inside Story of the Phone Hacking Trial, available via Canbury Press or also on Amazon. I am currently contributing to a new site for open source journalism, called Bellingcat, and advisor (along with Sir Harry Evans and Bill Emmott) to an exciting new crowdfunded journalism startip Byline

Getting in Contact

My generic email is my first name at peterjukes.com. That should get through to me pretty quickly. My Linked In profile is here. For non journalistic inquiries, for television stage and film, contact Howard Gooding at Judy Daish Associates. Examples of my television work can be found on IMDB. This links to the site for my forthcoming musical, Mrs Gucci. My radio plays can be found in various audiobook formats on Amazon and elsewhere.

 

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