Oratorical Machines

Edward Said could be considered in some ways a theorist of social media:

While it is true and even discouraging that all the main outlets are, however, controlled by the most powerful interests and consequently by the very antagonists one resists or attacks, it is also true that a relatively mobile intellectual energy can take advantage of and, in effect, multiply the kinds of platforms available for use. [...] communities shunned by the main media, and who have at their disposal other kinds of what Swift sarcastically called oratorical machines. Think of the impressive range of opportunities offered by the lecture platform, the pamphlet, radio, alternative journals, occasional papers, the interview, the rally, the church pulpit, and the Internet, to name only a few.

Edward W. Said from Humanism and Democratic Criticism [2004] p. 132

The reader is set in a community. And the conversations are multiple.

And so for day 855
16.04.2009