Sometimes, you are thinking about a problem, and then the perfect metaphor to describe the problem just drops in your lap. Today is such a lucky day.

The following is a quote by Walt Whitman, who supposedly said that “to have great poets, there must be great audiences, too.” This captures nicely the challenge I have given myself once I will be done here at the Annenberg School for Communication – the challenge of looking for my greatest audience.

Is a great audience necessary in order to become a great poet? Like the chicken and the egg problem, one wonders whether the audience comes first, or the poet. Does the audience make the poet great, or is the poet great anyway, and he just needs an audience to appreciate him/her? Perhaps both need each other and it is a back and forth dynamics. Too often do we emphasize cultural production from the point of view from ‘the creator’ – how often do we forget that the environment, the structure is so vital to allowing a creator to become inspired? To encourage, and challenge him/her to achieve greater heights?

I have been talking to mostly an American audience for a few years now. Being in front of an American audience to some degree leads to a certain production – let’s call it the ‘American mode’ of production that I have been functioning in for some years now. I have been producing American-appropriate texts for a mostly American audience. But what about the other modes I have? Most people only have one dominant mode – but those in the margins and in the in-between develop capacities for interoperability. Using a more practical real life example in highlighting interoperability – how many social network websites are you subscribed to? People in the United states are most likely on Facebook or MySpace (anyone still on MySpace these days??). But I have friends scattered across a wide range of social network websites – Hyves (the dominant Dutch social network website), Friendster (friends whom I met around the time it got popular, Hong Kong friends), and Facebook. Where is the interoperability?

Interoperability, the capacity to be able to move around and adapt to different networks – people ask me where I will go once I am done. My interoperability extends to the United States, Asia and Europe. I can function in Dutch, Hong Kong, Chinese, American, even Taiwanese mode. But where is the place where I can bring all this together? Where is my greatest audience? Exciting times ahead. Not reducing myself to a single mode. Looking for my whole voice, desperately looking for my audience. They seem intractably intertwined with each other.