Last week Ms. Flaherty started in on Martin Heidegger and Snakes on a Plane. This week, she finishes them off.

So how does a phenomenon such as SoaP first begin? I suppose beginning at the beginning is the best jumping off point. First and foremost people have been brought up in Space, and because of this basic fact, we have very strong reactions and emotions towards space and how we experience space. Naturally, enclosed space is much easier to digest. As a result, humans think in terms of communities, which are the social equivalent of enclosed spaces. The blogosphere is a provincial environment -- a contained milieu. Individual's blogs, such as Josh Friedman's, are most commonly linked to other blogs (in his case, screenwriters') via references and hyperlinks. This closed system turns bloggers into colonizers -- they have created a discrete home within the vastness of cyberspace. As such, blogging is an extreme case of provincial living... with the added bonus of voyeuristic possibility.

Up to this point I have described the Internet and the blogosphere as a world -- as space. It is important to consider that the earth is a holding tank for many spaces -- many different worlds -- each world consisting of an energy that surrounds a specific focus. Classically, worlds are demarked by discipline, such as the World of Math, the World of Literature, the World of Physics, and so on. For our purposes let's explore a more playful world, the World of Celebrity gossip. This world houses everything unique to this specific discipline, most significantly language. Digging into the not so distant celebrity gossip past, the Bennifer Files provide an archetypal example. We were able to keep abreast of all of the developments of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck's ill-fated romance via online and print periodicals. The discourse surrounding celebrity gossip tends to use flip language and content which seems suspiciously like a regurgitation of high school drama. Nonetheless, we follow it whether by choice or osmosis. Thus, our perception of what it means to be Jennifer Lopez or Ben Affleck, or any celebrity is constructed by the bits and pieces we pick up (and sometimes take home) from Star, People, and US Weekly, the media in which their world exists.

Similarly, the SoaP blogosphere is a world, a bit more highbrow, but still very much a world. Consequently, by virtue of his participation within this particular world, Josh Friedman is revealed as Josh Friedman the Blogger. Thus, his content shows up as meaningful to those who actively or voyeuristically participate. Moreover, his blog gives others a forum. SoaP is a phenomenon because of the incredible convergence between different, seemingly unrelated, worlds.

As represented in the SoaP timeline, the physical world and the blogosphere developed a call and response rapport. When Bloggers complained and traffic increased, New Line responded: not only by keeping the title Snakes on A Plane, but also by doctoring what was originally a PG-13 film. Additional scenes and Samuel L. Jackson-generated profanities, earned Snakes on A Plane the credibility of an 'R' rating.

The emergence of this new forum is the true genius of SoaP. Those bloggers active in this particular group have managed to create an active community, one which effects communities and entities outside itself. As a colleague recently reminded me, there is no way to know what Martin Heidegger would think of the Internet as forum. The facts and historicity into which Heidegger's life was embedded are entirely different than those which influence my life. It must be noted that at the time of his death in 1976, the Internet was in its military infancy. Thus, I speculate when I say: if Heidegger were a contemporary of the SoaP phenomenon he would find it an uplifting example of technology functioning at its highest level. The overall significance of the blogosphere -- particularly the SoaP nexus -- is the presence of community and of home. The genius of the SoaP phenomeon is how effective and effectual the relationship between the blogosphere and the physical world has become.

The SoaP phenomenon illustrates that not only is Samuel L. Jackson having more fun than anybody else, but that the blogosphere is one of the most generous and important forums today. Before his death, Heidegger wrote, "It requires reflection, whether and how there can still be a homeland in the age of technological equi-formed world civilization." My own relationship with technology -- specifically the Internet -- has undergone an extreme transformation over the past two years. What was initially rather alien to me has become a world in which I spend hour upon hour, a world in which I feel very much at home.

I urge you to go forthwith, see Snakes on a Plane, pay particularly close attention when Samuel L. Jackson convincingly delivers the line "There are motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane", and remember its pre-blogosphere predecessor: "There are snakes on a plane". Then laugh at this absurdity.

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