Youngblood's Secession - Whitney Ratliff

"I offer language because new words and new meanings for old words are essential for the new understandings and agreements that crisis of this magnitude demands. Words don't express what we think, they tell us what we think. Thought is made in the mouth. We need to think differently so I try to speak differently."- Gene Youngblood

To create a digital utopia that is free and open on the Internet cannot be possible without first demanding that it be possible. However, this can create some problems involving tyranny. Who will take charge if the Internet is free? And what would a free and open Internet be like? How can an Internet that holds its little individual sections of images, media, information, and personal archives be even more free and open? Aren't they already free and open? (aside from private websites or error pages where websites won't allow you to download something)

Youngblood redefines language, individually defining points he makes throughout his texts and understanding how an artist can express meaning and understanding through media and presenting it to basically pass it along. Although Youngblood presents a good means for how one can use this new language and its understanding to good use by connecting the dots, to consider a more open and free expansion of the Internet with the usage of a new language can sometimes be filtered differently by the viewer. While everyone probably already knows what a jpeg is, a terminology we now use to describe an image format, not everyone will consider a jpeg better than a png or understand what he it does to an image without those underlying factors of meaning. While jpeg is the language within he digital realm of the internet, not everyone associates its meaning in the same context. And as Youngblood boldly states, "Control of context is controlling reality. Context is everything." Without that context of knowing what is what in the language of the internet, miscommunication can arise and provide and even more confusing translation. What may look like duck to some can be a rabbit for others.