hmmm. maybe.

I don't know if it gets across the idea that the conversation involves real people, though. Are you conversing "with" the living web, or "through" the living web?

Need to think about this.

Hmm.... Help me out here Elizabeth... thinking about this reminds me of my grammer class... aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, amid, among... I memorized a list in 7th grade and I still remember them...

Well, "conversation with" implies that the subject (Joi Ito) is talking to the object (the living web).

"Conversation through" implies that the object is being used for transmision, or as a conduit.

So, in this case, you're having a conversation *with* me, *through* the living web.

I like the comingling of the two terms, though--it's just a question of getting the right tone across.

Actually I think it works BOTH ways - both through the web - as a transport or conduit to the world (in multiple languages, timezones and I.P. address zones) and with the web, as if it was it's own beast - it's own cybersoul, a collective mass.

I just wish there was a better way of connecting these comments, to my blog and your original post. Besides notification - this idea of either 2 way links or what I call 'anchornodes' is obsessing me.

One day - we'll be able to attach comments (in many forms) directly to Liz's LA Times articles and argue semantics, politics, economics or sexual preferences - with direct manipulative association (by manipulating everything in one place and drawing and dragging arrows, icons or words around the screen.) By being able to draw correlaries, diasagreements and counterpoints to issues, innuendos and expressive 'voicings' multimedia conversationialists will blur the edge between publishing and communicating.

As I implied in my blog, it's really a notion that most Westerners can't grok - a 'collective' soul. We can talk about an American spirit, and all get really pissed off at Arabs at the same time, but the core of the Western soul is an individual, who worries about himself first, while I find Eastern sensibility to be much more in-tune with 'us'.

I think you're right, Marc--the "two-way link" concept is a critical piece of this. One of the things I really like about Movable Type is the "trackback" feature, which looks for links in my posts,and automatically "pings" the origial blog if it also supports trackback.

It's not quite as good as what I'd like to see in terms of interlinking, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

The use of the word "through" just doesn't sound right to my ear. The word that DOES sound right comes as somewhat of a surprise to me. "Over", as in "We are having a conversation over the living web.", "We are having a conversation over the telephone." or "We are having a conversation over a glass of wine."

Over and out...

So I guess the question is whether the living web is the entity I am conversing with or it is the stuff on the ends. Can you talk to an ant colony, or do you have to talk to the ants? If we believe Sun when they say "the network is the computer" maybe I can talk WITH the "living web."? Because, if I can't don't I have to talk over the living web, WITH something?