Well, push my button baby

Shocked, ready to rock in a strawberry print T-shirt and turquoise jeans, is taking it all in. She has solicited Cohen's advice on developing a socially responsible record label, but at the moment she seems to be chewing over the political left's detachment from the church. "Progressives are operating from a moral basis, and they've got spirituality built into the culture," she posits.

Cohen nods and speculates that music may be one way in which otherwise scattered idealists, such as the cultural creatives, can come together around ideals.

"It was music that brought me to church," Shocked notes, referring to the West Angeles Church of God in Christ in L.A., where she was "born again" as a Christian in 1992.

Cohen cracks a wry smile. "It was music that brought me to you." . . .

But can they have faith that the feisty author of "Graffiti Limbo," that activist getting hauled off by the cops on the cover of Short, Sharp, Shocked, the woman who changed her last name from Johnston to Shocked as a protest, still spits in the eye of injustice at age 39, nine years married, and Born Again?

"I've deepened a little bit," Shocked says with a thoughtful nod. "I've grown. But you should get better as you get older. And I [can't] see why you shouldn't get more radical." She pauses as if to clarify a point. "You don't change. You become more of yourself," she adds. "All artists strive to do is open themselves up more and more."

Shocked still calls herself "a raving feminist," albeit one who also thanks God for bringing her "full circle" in the religious life she fled as a youth. The journey has brought her a new perspective on political ideology in music and religion. . . . Today, she says, "I'm not going to speak about women's issues. I'm going to speak about the insights that being a woman have given me into all kinds of conditions, the human condition."

As for whether or not fans accept her religious beliefs, she feels that people's concerns are activated mostly by the ideologies attached to religious dogma which is what she feels the media emphasizes. That preachiness simply isn't part of her act. "If people want to project onto me all the baggage they have about Born Again and fundamentalism, they've got the wrong target," she says.

Why I Love Tom Matrullo

Small pieces, big ideas

Weinberger's book Small Pieces, Loosely Joined proposes not only that the Web isn't boring, but that the excitement is only just beginning. We haven't missed the main event, only the previews of coming attractions.

He sees the promise of greater things yet to come in the ways that culture's engagement with the Web has already begun to influence the English language. He adopts seven key terms ("space," "time," "perfection," togetherness," "knowledge," "matter," and "hope") and illustrates the ways that their conventional usage might be seen to apply simply and directly to the Web. Then he goes further to show how these terms warp and crack with the torsion engendered by their roles in articulating Web experiences. After they have circulated online, these terms return to colloquial use with changed textures--space, perfection, hope, all signify very differently after their circulation on the Web.

Weinberger gracefully invites technological newcomers into the party. He has a gift for epigrammatic phrases, and regularly summarizes his exposition in memorable sound bites. He cites both familiar and less well-known examples of ways the Web has changed over its brief history, and of ways the Web has changed us. The heart of the book, however, lies in Weinberger's ardent affirmation of the positive possibilities that the Web opens for humanity. Without concealing the seamier dimensions of the Web, he urges readers to take up the opportunity to be better people in new ways, online.

Thus far one might construe the book--at the prompting of its title--as a new, improved theory of the Web. That would miss the point: Weinberger really hits his stride not as a pitchman for e-commerce or a disneyfied futurama, but as a reflective advocate for humanity. The subtitle might more appropriately suggest that Weinberger here offers a theory of how human beings may live more richly human lives in conjunction with the Web.

This mixed thematic impetus provides a great strength to the book. Weinberger writes with passion addressed to his readers' passions, in a way that distinguishes his work from "For Dummies" introductions or technological snake-oil pitches. Weinberger sings the opportunities that reside in the Web not with a self-interested voice, but as one who earnestly wants others to share the excitement he feels.

The mixed thematics also set Weinberger up to frustrate some readers. A book as ambitious as this one will evoke the hopes and passions of its readers, and will inevitably disappoint some. More technically-inclined readers, for instance, may wish for more detail in the discussions of the Web itself. Some readers interested in media theory may wish for fewer anecdotes and more analysis.

But this is not a book that should satisfy readers; on its own terms, the book ought to push its readers to think beyond what Weinberger himself suggests (the book, like the Web, is far from being "perfect," and is paradoxically stronger for that imperfection). This is part of Weinberger's subtle exposition of his theme. In composing a meditation on unfamiliar modes of human self-expression, Weinberger appeals to--and stimulates--our inclination to reach further than the limits of what we presently imagine. Small Pieces, Loosely Joined is not only an extraordinarily apt, lapidary description of the Web--it's the right book at the right time. We should read it appreciatively, in the hope that once we've caught up to where Weinberger leads us, he will again point out to us ways that these practices with which we've grown familiar begin to have decidedly unfamiliar effects on our lives and imaginations. Permalink -Main Page-