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DMLR*Newsletter — Xtra GOLD_57
I. IG Rocket.
 In recent years the social media development has supplied every person with plentiful digital space (computer-mediated social environment) where anyone can locate filed materials necessary for fixing the personal or a cluster's memory—usually the short-term facts from public events and private happenings as it's solicited by those world wide holders, whom you would interact with on their own conditions.
The Internet as infrastructure is a complex assemblages of socio-technical components. While infrastructures are governed by institutions and rules, they also govern us as social actors for they embody specific arrangements of power and authority, thereby defining the particular forms of the 'social ordering'.
Within limits of the most popular social networks, the Instagram case, it results a narrative platform. Its potential as a narrative medium would be compared to the capabilities of literature and movie. Since its launch (2010), IG was initially known as photo-sharing platform, the network has been skyrocketing to 2 billion active users (MAUs). IG owner Meta results a global outfit led by one typical tycoon of the XXI century, Marc Zuckerberg—an AI devotee, being the 'real' Rocket Scientist his rival billionaire. A unique feature that distinguishes IG today from other social networks is its strongly pronounced multimediality, i.e. the simultaneous combination of text, static images, audio, and video [DO I HAVE AN ACCOUNT ON IG? OFC, @donro959]. By making use of one or more of those communication means, IG accounts can be classified as either 'narrative' or 'modular'. The narrative model aims to tell a coherent story, the modular model is limited to show. Marked trends on IG imply the user's superior knowledge of the technical features offered by the platform in order to reach an evident enjoyment in personal storytelling. But today it's businesses, brands, and professionals that experience the real potential of the narrative on IG. For example @arireidproperty, real estate & property manager, is one of the most convincing and followed creators present on IG and her daily reel is inviting to consider buying very impressive and expensive houses mainly located in the United Kingdom. Become a case study, she has been interviewed on The Times... Ari on her profile let a niche open to HelpGaza, why? [WISH HER LUCK & HEALTH!]
Or what is the goal of a consumer good on IG? Drink responsibly one Ballantines, the Finest Blended Scotch Whisky? Documenting the Good Life & those who #StayTrue around the world (75.7 thousand follower @ballentines)? Emotional ties make IG the ultimate platform for brands to connect with their audience, as well as take advantage of influencer marketing opportunities...
Fine-looking persons but the doubt remains that they are just doubles on IG. Doppelgänger (from German 'double', almost 'bubble'): the newest book by Naomi Klein who is using a modular IG in order to show her multifaceted activity as climate activist and academic. She's campaigning against the dreadful military action into the Gaza Strip [#CEASEFIRE]. Her double's @naomiaklein, connecting with 82.4 thousand people.
Then is street artist Banksy a doppelgänger too? Meta verified @banksy: 13.2 million are following him, indeed blue-checked.
Last but not least, Sugarmount if you want, here simply Zuck (@zuck 15.2 million disciples). His presence as social granter, as explorer to the Artificial Intelligence applied to business and private life... ∞ like Meta of Life.
II. RAM & ME.
Talking to people whose parents or relatives do not recognize them anymore, you guess the mighty distress they are living with while they are trying to manage with the dear ones affected by the lost of memory. Until you find you are writing notes to yourself... first thing in the morning to think of and so on. How to feed the memory, it's a challenging task at the threshold of 65. I have only few photographs to remember the main events of my life. To talk nonsense there are no evidences at all of many stages of my life—just some images from the cradle to the Communion, quite a few under the army or the marriage, and usual snapshots taken during the holiday trips.
Dark room. To collect the objects that could reinforce one's memory, it's an arduous task. Geological layers of papers, diaries, books, cuttings, photo albums, fine objects small, tickets, souvenirs, postcards, IDs, have to be arranged free of dust, ordered, kept safe from natural oxidation and oblivion. To cultivate a long-term memory it takes time and affection for.
Lost in memories, to rehabilitate old dispersed pieces out of the recondite mind. It's when memory works out with no precaution but solicited by impromptu views or readings.
I been most attracted by the forgotten places of my childhood. Patrick Modiano wrote about 'Souvenirs Dormants', pointing out the topography as a system to remember or forget not. Visiting my birth place after years of absence means reconnect with the child I was: the path from home to the primary school is what I repeat happily every time by nimble footwork because it is a primary need I feel to accomplish before visiting attractive spots. (If it's still 1968 I could at least find my mother the knitter and get to see myself at the age of nine years old, so what?).
Reading is a stimulus to remember. My memory is a world apart, infused with magic and mystery, labyrinthine, where real history (personal?) and fiction intersect and dissolve quickly. What ever could I do with 'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon? Penguin Classics, #155 in Dystopian Fiction according to AMZN. The world abounding of Displaced Persons: "We are still living under Gravity's Rainbow" (cit. from Wired as of 16.10.2023). Across 700-plus pages—there are books which are singularly dense—the novel aids healthy memory. Inside it I've found many chronicled brands worth a mention, some even linked to my kid's impressions: Lucky Strike (cigarettes), Mercedes, Rolls Royce, Hispano-Suiza (cars), Ford, Lincoln, GMC, Pontiac (cars again), Chiquita (bananas), Kleenex (paper tissue), Esso and Shell (gasoline), Pilsner Urquell (beer), Candy and Palmolive (toiletries), Veuve Cliquot and Taittinger (champagne), Osram, Philips and Tungsram (bulbs), Bayer (aspirin tablets), Zippo (lighters), Sandoz, Ciba, Geigy (chemical cartel), Siemens, Thyssen and Krupp (military-industrial cartel), Murphy's Law (assumption)... And, among so many historical personages and actors, how don't remember Laurel and Hardy and the pie-throwing in their movies? Just in order to hear again my father laughing out loud at their misfortunes.
∫ Reading → Random Access Memory!
Bei thyssen krupp fett
stehen quartalzahlen an
nach finanzen.net
(yes, I wrote this haiku in German...)
III. SPORT MEMORIES.
Sport events memory requires a lot of pubblications, journalists, archives to be kept alive... But what do it occurr when you are emotionally involved into those events? Who is registering your feelings? Where, when and how do you keep track of those sport moments that didchanged if not your life at least your ordinary days?
When Stefano Fresi, an Italian actor and entertainer (IG: @stafanofresi), recites the monologue about Ayrton Senna, he's going to identify absolutely with the unlucky racing car driver, his involvement is that of a fan sooner than of a sensible performer. The wins made of Senna a F1 top driver, and world championship, while many defeats, as the actor remembers to us all, including a premature deadly crash, made of him a myth of the sport as a rule.
Recently I have read a collection of essays by the poet Giovanni Raboni (www.giovanniraboni.it) dedicated to the football game: some poems and writings for telling his own passion as Inter Fan. He said that "si è tifosi della propria squadra perché si è tifosi della propria vita".
Taken on these premises, I would like to collect and order the events bound to that experience told by the poet, when he's referring to the days the fan had spent getting in on the stadium to attend the match and support the football team: INTER LIVE!
IV. REISEN!
Es müssen ein paar Bemerkungen machen. For I had been studying German as foreign language from the middle school to the university 1st class. An ordinary study, Deutsch als Fremdsprache.
Choosing German was oddly accidental, due to a late enrolment to the middle school class. But I was holding the difficulty of that study and became proud of the aura German brought me back as student of great learning...
Höhepunkt of that period was the journeys to German-speaking countries, first Austria and later West Germany, officially known as the Federal Republic of Germany for it had a doppelgänger-state, aka DDR. In those excursions to the origins of the German mother-tongue they were involved my parents, some friends, a wife too, in natural order of appearance. So I would remember many different locations with any group engaged in leisure activities. The picture at the Olympia Stadion in Munich celebrates exactly the best mood of my youth: I'm standing there under the futuristic covering structure, made of acrylic glass and steel cables, wearing an eskimo coat and velvet trousers. Snapshot taken seven years after the Olympic Games that arena was built and widely known for. A sporting place erected for leaving behind the WWII and the downfall of Europe. Erinnerungen.
The memory of German language I did experience by travelling is kind of underground culture inside me. Wien means driving a camper through the up-and-downhill path. Salzburg the snowless New Year's Day between the sheets. Zeltweg for the F1 racing cars championship, woodland POV from the Bosch-Kurve while eating wurst and sauerkraut. "Trink, Brüderlei trink!" at the Oktoberfest, and the one-liter HB beer mug into my rucksack as a trophy. Berlin and its Alexanderplatz—visited reunited and still separated, one Laika stolen or dreamed by R.W. Fassbinder. The overcast days in Hamburg, as lonely as me.
Now I'm kind of a retired tourist in Switzerland. Zürich my next target, after I have been passing on through the 57-km St. Gotthard massif tunnel by train. Hydrographic node of middle Europe, many rivers spring up from these mountains before deciding where they will flow to. One of them is the Rhine, I'm rent-a-biking along it from Schaffhausen to the rapids and back. The gothic-type lettering of Zeughauskeller awaits me feeling like a curious tourist: traditional restaurant established on an ancient armory spot, just to remember the legend of Wilhelm Tell, if you look back at the walls. Late walking the streets on both banks of the Limmat, while Lindt gold-wrapped hares are spying on me from the lighted shop windows. Is this the Slothropian Zürich, isn't it?
V. Direct Marketing.
The DIRECT MARKETING glossary is available on DMLR in a 3-document edition (PDF) you can browse here or easily download onto your desktop.
It consists of 19 pages as a whole, 311 paragraphs/terms, 236 Kb, 7450 words, 44772 types!
Select and print the three parts of the glossary in English from PDF::Menu.
Sure the Internet has been changing the traditional snail-mail based direct marketing. And yet the Internet marketing is a consequence of the old direct marketing somehow. Many terms you'll find inside the DM glossary are suiting for the e-mail marketing too... but they come from a business development initiative of Canada Post Corporation [hommage à Connexions --centre de resources en marketing direct].
VI. Linked
Resources.
The Guide functions as a sort of memorandum of the web sites I have been visiting for a purpose that it would be informative, comparative, or sharing.
For this essay on the instability of memory, I would like to introduce www.meta.ai about the newest ask-me-anything approach to the AI—but in Italy it's not available yet. So far I prefer the tattooed intelligence of Natalie Cuomo. She is an American comedian whose creative juices I have really appreciated on IG, where she presents short reels extracted from her funny shows while performing on small clubs: she smells spontaneous and fast-witted to me (IG: @nataliecuomo_). Brava!
P.S. As for www.thomaspynchon.com, it came online in 1997 but this website isn't affiliated to Mr Pynchon who is notoriously reclusive from the media.
VII. MyQuiz.
 What is Meta Marketing?
A method, usually ascribed to Philip Kotler, of studying marketing and its relationship to every aspect of human life... (read much more on "Penguin Dictionary of Marketing" by Phil Harris). |
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