Jorn Barger

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Jorn Barger (Template:IPAc-en; born 1953) is an American blogger, best known as editor of Robot Wisdom, an early weblog. He has written extensively on James Joyce and artificial intelligence, among other subjects; his writing is almost entirely self-published.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

LifeEdit

Born 1953 in Yellow Springs, Ohio,<ref name="barger-template"/> as the second child of Rex Barger and Criss Barger Stange,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Jorn Barger spent his childhood in his hometown.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> At age 11 he got to use an early programmable digital computer, the Minivac 601.<ref name="barger-template" /> His family moved to Bemus Point, New York, in 1966.<ref name="Barger1999">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

He graduated high school a year early and attended Jamestown Community College, Antioch College, New College of Florida and University at Buffalo without earning a degree.<ref name="barger-template">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1973 he decided against a career in computing and "worked on self-discovery" instead for the next six years.<ref name="barger-background-ai">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> During this period, in 1978, he lived for six months at The Farm, Stephen Gaskin's intentional community in Tennessee.

During the first half of the 1980s he programmed games and educational software for the Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 8-bit computers.<ref name="barger-template" /> From 1989 to the end of 1992, Barger worked as a research programmer at Northwestern University's Institute for the Learning Sciences under the artificial intelligence researcher Roger Schank.<ref>Template:Cite newsgroup</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He is not known to have held regular employment since and supports himself with "odd bits of contract work."<ref name="Julian Dibbell" />

Previously a longtime resident of the Rogers Park neighborhood in Chicago,<ref name="Julian Dibbell" /> Barger was living in Socorro, New Mexico as of late 2003.<ref name = "Kahney 2003">Template:Cite magazine</ref> He has a daughter named Elizabeth.

UsenetEdit

Barger has been an active Usenet participant since 1989, with "nearly ten thousand postings".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He wrote early FAQs on ASCII art, Kate Bush, Thomas Pynchon, and James Joyce. In 1994 he proposed the idea of the "Inverse Law of Usenet Bandwidth": "The more interesting your life becomes, the less you post... and vice versa."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> As an "unstoppable Usenet poster who could carry on simultaneous debates about Ibsen, Chomsky, artificial intelligence, and Kate Bush,"<ref name = "Boutin-street">Template:Cite news</ref> he became an "online legend"<ref name = "Boutin-street" /> who would also get cited in the national press as an expert on Usenet.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

WeblogEdit

Barger started Robot Wisdom<ref name = "internet years">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> in February 1995, publishing essays and resources on James Joyce, AI, history, Internet culture, hypertext design, and technology trends. Announcements of plans for a future "hardcopy edition" of Robot Wisdom for purchase began appearing at the foot of some of the site's pages.

On December 17, 1997, inspired by Dave Winer's Scripting News and running on Winer's Frontier publishing software,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Barger began posting daily entries to his Robot Wisdom Weblog<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> in the hope of finding "an audience who might see the connections between [his] many interests."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> These postings featured "a list of links each day shaped by his own interests in the arts and technology,"<ref>Rosenberg, Scott (May 28, 1999). "Technology: Fear of Links." Template:Webarchive Salon.com. Retrieved July 12, 2005.</ref> thus offering a "day-to-day log of his reading and intellectual pursuits"<ref name="CNet 20 March 2007">Template:Cite news</ref> and coining the term "weblog" as a novel form of web publishing.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Safire, William (July 28, 2002). "On Language: Blog". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved July 12, 2005</ref> The term was shortened to "blog" by Peter Merholz in 1999.<ref name = "CNet 20 March 2007" />

Barger has also described his intentions in terms of exploration and discovery: to elucidate "what treasures were there"<ref name="Rhodes interview 1999">Template:Cite news</ref> and to "make the web as a whole more transparent,"<ref name="Barger Wired 2007">Template:Cite magazine</ref> a weblog needed to provide a constantly updated and well-described stream of the "best web links."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Robot Wisdom's Net.literate portal, which started in July 1998, was a human-edited web directory that served as a complement to Barger's weblog and aimed to provide the best links on a wide range of topics arranged in ten categories.<ref name="Robot Wisdom portal">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Robot Wisdom Weblog acquired a large and enthusiastic following: after a computing newsletter had celebrated the weblog as "offbeat,"<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Village Voice described it as "one of the best collections of news and musings culled from the Web,"<ref name="Bunn 1998">Template:Cite news</ref> The Guardian called Barger "a highly observant and thoughtful surfer at work"<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and named his site "one of the most popular weblogs."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> InfoWorld counted it among the very few weblogs that were "worth a visit,"<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Brill's Content claimed that it presented "news the way web pioneers envisioned it—hypertextual, wide-reaching, and exhaustive,"<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Fast Company called it "one of the best Web logs on the Net,"<ref name="fastcompany">Template:Cite news</ref> Feed wrote that the site was "frequented by thousands of the Net's most knowledgeable,"<ref name="Julian Dibbell">Template:Cite news</ref> Wired hailed it as "one of the oldest and most popular weblogs,"<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and The New Yorker commended Barger's "healthy appetite for everything from literature to science,"<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> whereas The Register found that "there's no better reader on the Internet than Jorn Barger."<ref name="Orlowski">Template:Cite news</ref> The contents of Robot Wisdom Weblog in its heyday have been recalled as a "mesmerizing sequence of arcana"<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and a "cornucopia of offbeat delights."<ref name="Rosenberg2009">Template:Cite book</ref>

Barger has also been recognized for his contribution to the emergence of the blogosphere. He was nominated among the "visionaries who changed the face of the Web in 1998"<ref name=innovator>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> in CNET's Web Innovator Awards for having "inspired the Web Log community."<ref name=innovator /> Barger's work has been judged "seminal,"<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and he reportedly "set the tone for a million blogs to come."<ref name = "Boutin-street" /> An ACM paper discusses Barger and Chris Gulker, along with other early bloggers such as Raphael Carter, as the originators of blogging as a networked practice.<ref>Template:Cite conference</ref>

In September 1999, Barger posted one of the first in-depth examinations of weblogs, the "Weblog FAQ,"<ref name="weblog faq">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and he led a weblog forum<ref name="weblogs egroup">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> between August 1999 and April 2000.

In December 1999, Barger linked to a passage by anti-zionist critic Israel Shahak, which drew a concerned response from a fellow blogger<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and led to allegations of anti-Semitism.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Subsequently, criticism of Israel and Judaism became a staple of Robot Wisdom Weblog and the site came to carry slogans in the header banner,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> such as "judaism Template:Sic is racism is incompatible with democracy,"<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> that many readers and fellow bloggers found "objectionable."<ref name="Rosenberg2009" /> Along with a reduced posting schedule and intermittent cessation of updates after 2000, Barger's unexpected anti-Israel turn has been cited as a main contributing factor to a "slow fade-out"<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> of the site's popularity and reputation.

Robot Wisdom has stopped updating or gone offline repeatedly for protracted periods of time.<ref>"Jorn Barger missing." MetaFilter discussion (December 2, 2003). Retrieved July 12, 2005.</ref><ref>"The Black is Back." MetaFilter discussion (February 23, 2005). Retrieved July 12, 2005.</ref> By December 2001, Barger was experiencing financial difficulties that he announced would cause an interruption in keeping Robot Wisdom online.<ref name = "yafc">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The site then went offline for a couple of months. Barger allowed his domain registration to lapse in early 2005, but managed to bring the site back online a few weeks later.<ref name = "Wired 13 July 2005">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Robot Wisdom went offline again in late January 2007. On 10 February, Barger placed a note on his Robot Wisdom Auxiliary<ref name="auxiliary">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> weblog soliciting $10 (US) donations, payable to his web host, to help "save robotwisdom.com". By 12 February, Robotwisdom.com was online again.

Barger has experimented with monetizing Robot Wisdom soliciting advertisements in 2000, and, in 2005, donations via PayPal, yet never made "any money from his Web log."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

On James JoyceEdit

Barger seeks to establish a "connection between artificial intelligence and the masterworks of James Joyce,"<ref name="Julian Dibbell" /> whom he refers to as a master of descriptive psychology.<ref name="rosenberg-everything-72">Template:Cite book</ref> He has studied Joyce's notebooks and manuscripts for Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He has also prepared an online "shorter" annotated version of Finnegans Wake.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Barger's website has been cited for "extensive research into the Ulysses and Finnegans Wake manuscripts,"<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> yet very little of this work has passed academic peer review. As a result, it can sometimes be difficult to tell what is agreed upon by Joyce scholars and what is Barger's conjecture. Barger seemed to acknowledge this when he published his list of "50+ Joycean Conjectures".<ref name="joycean conjectures">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Barger has contributed one book chapter on Finnegans Wake<ref name="stratigraphy">Template:Cite book</ref> and a book review in the James Joyce Quarterly.<ref name ="joyce quarterly book review">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Autobiographical postingsEdit

Over the years, Barger has posted a number of autobiographical accounts. These include the following works:

Jorn Barger

Contents

LifeEdit

UsenetEdit

WeblogEdit

On James JoyceEdit

Autobiographical postingsEdit

ReferencesEdit

External linksEdit