picture of the FoR lecture announcement, tanyant's userpic, RL's PushkinLast week, the Future of Russian project kicked off with two guest lectures on the RuLiNet - the Russian literary Internet. Roman Leibov (Tartu) and yours truly (Bergen) met with students and staff for a two-hour lunch session on the early RuNet, writer's blogs, and more.Accompanied by sounds of crunching foccaccia and bursting cherry tomatoes, Roman Leibov led off with an overview of the fifteen-year old history of Russian online literature. For the entire lecture, do download the podcast - it is fun to hear, and the speaker knows what he is talking about as Russia's alleged first blogger (that RL was not literally the first Russian-speaking blogger is another story). But for those who prefer a written summary: among other things, Roman discussed the link between perestroika and digital developments; the role of diaspora and samizdat culture in the RuLiNet's early stages; and digital culture's impact on Russian reading habits - think the popularity of blogs, and short or visually oriented posts in particular - and on the literary production process. In a lively discussion, the speaker was implored to 'tell us how to become a famous blogger and web writer!' The answer? Gee, I forgot.After a break - and more foccaccia and tomatoes - I talked about Tat'iana Tolstaia's blog tanyant. Again, the podcast (& PPT) will tell you more; but alternatively, here is another mini-synopsis. Tolstaia's blog, I argued after introducing her prose, may seem radically innovative at first: the author avidly toys with its multimedia potential and explicitly conceives of it as a discursive space where linguistic laconism is de rigueur. But if you look closer, TT the writer and TT the blogger are not that far apart: not only do tanyant's posts become purely text-oriented with time; but the language errors that she promises to make in advance, lack in practice. Ultimately, in her blog, as in her print writing, Tolstaia is a professional writer to the bone, who meticulously crafts even as mundane a text as a cake recipee. More vivid discussion, on Tolstaia's son Tioma Lebedev's highly popular blog, among other things, followed. With a look at his blog and site, the session ended and all went their own way - an 'own way' which my co-speaker managed to transform into a genuine digital travelogue ('Пойду что ли опять на знаменитый рынок гад морских нюхать. Они, с родным простившись дном, лежат там в морге ледяном. Впрочем, пять часов нюхать тоже устанешь'), interactive and richer with multimedia elements than tanyant ever was.But then such an extensive blog report is not surprising for someone who was an ultra-active RuLiNet-chik from the start. If the hypertext Roman is perhaps Leibov's most famous online project, then his Pushkin Page is at least as intriguing. Visitors of this site's ssylki page are treated to a frighteningly large number of links to Pushkin-devoted pages... which are hidden under quotations from the poet's work. 'Cybermocking' the adoration of the Great Writer, the Pushkin Page parallels other web projects which, in Dmitrii Golynski's words, 'sarcastically take up arms against the figure par excellence of the Russian classical tradition: the national poet Alexander Pushkin.' For examples, go see net artist El' zelenaia's Winking Pushkin page, where users can alter the poet's face with their mouse, or Sergei Teterin's site devoted to Cyber-Pushkin - a machine generating cyberpoetry based on Pushkin's lexicon and style.For me, the session - and my digitalized talk - evoked thoughts about the phenomenon of podcasting. Not only scholars, but writers, too, can be heard and seen in a rapidly growing amount of digital mp3 and video files. On the where and what of that development, more soon.ERhttp://www.uib.no/rg/future_r/nyheter/2009/03/future-of-russian-podcasts