My name is David Clearwater.  I am a 30 40 something professor of New Media at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. The UofL is a small but dynamic liberal arts research university located in Southern Alberta.  My interests revolve around media, politics, persuasion, propaganda, gaming, film, documentaries and news, advertising, marketing, technology… and culture.  I have been a long-time enthusiast of the web, going all the way back to its earliest beginnings (as a public resource) in the early 1990s.  (This was a time when there were an estimated 10 to 15 million users on the entire web.)  Heck, I still remember some of the earlier networked protocols and tools that preceded hypertext.  I can recall being so impressed by the technology, especially its informational and educational applications, that I quickly learned html and some scripting, built a website and, in the mid-1990s, began giving public workshops for the local arts community.  I am (happily) single and live in Lethbridge surrounded by beautiful landscapes and coulees, endless skies,  and the constant breezes, chinooks and, sometimes, wind you’d swear was coming from a hurricane.

About this Blog

After a certain amount of disillusionment with ‘free’ social networking or other such websites, I decided that I did not want some corporation owning and/or having access to my personal data or any other information that could be used for spamming purposes. Consequently, I decided to acquire my own domain and hosting service (in Canada) and make use of the open source software that is abundantly available… hence this blog.

The way that I tend to use blogs is through web searches for specific subjects rather than following specific blogs (which I do as well).  Consequently, this blog is designed more for the person who is searching for information on a particular topic and happens to stumble upon the information contained therein.  That is why I have disabled the comments as I have no intention or desire to deal with all the spammers out there and I don’t really have time to check/moderate comments.

So, this blog is more akin to a repository of information, links, and ideas rather than an interactive blog soliciting for comments and/or followers.

And… finally… the title of this blog.

It comes from the English title of an essay that I encountered in the latter part of the 1990s while I was working toward a Master’s degree at what was then known as the Graduate Program in Communications at McGill University. The essay was written by a German writer named Siegfried Kracauer and the ideas in it… and the ideas it inspired in me… have remained very vivid all these years.

Enjoy… and Peace.

————————————————–

This site is hosted by Canadian Web Hosting and built with:

• Inkscape (open source vector graphics software): http://www.inkscape.org/
• GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program (open source image editing software): http://www.gimp.org/
• WordPress (free blogging software): http://wordpress.org/
• Artisteer (WordPress/Drupal theme design software): http://www.artisteer.com/
• MySQL (open source database software): http://www.mysql.com/