At first, Xanga was kind of fun -- posting things, getting props from others, building friends' lists.... But after about a month, I got bored with it all. I just couldn't see the appeal of all this first-person storytelling. Its interactive features were limited ... and far too in-grown for my taste. It started to feel like an echo chamber, and boring at that. So I let the little blog die.
That was 2001. Yet now -- today -- I cannot imagine not blogging, or not being surrounded online by bloggers writing about themselves. I suppose I've changed a little. But I think the culture has changed ... profoundly.
About 20 months ago I started up blogging again. I was in -- let's just say a pause in my overworked working life -- and thought I'd start up a Blogger blog. I chose Blogger because it was free, and ubiquitous. Why I started it up was mainly just to rant a bit -- anonymously -- about whatever struck my mind. Soon it ended up getting rather political, which made me grateful of the anonymous choice; I would not want to meet some of the folks I encountered online. (No, I won't give over the blog's particulars. That would spoil it, now, wouldn't it?)
How far we've come since 2001. Some people like to call what we have now "Web 2.0" -- as if the internet evolved in stable releases, like Photoshop or Word. I suppose it's only natural to try to define something that eludes definition. And since there's no telling where exactly we're headed in the evolution of internet-based interactivity, the tendency is to assume that we can make like Heisenberg and know, at least, where we are.
The thing is, can we really know where we are? Do we in fact have the right perspective on the present? What's more, are we truly served by seeing history as leading up to where we stand "at the end of time," so to speak?
The patterns we see are informed by our own perspectives. It may turn out that we haven't even begun to see change in our society. How can we know, when we don't know what will be? How can we judge what has happened, when we see it all as leading up to where we are now? Aren't we flotsam trying to define oceans? Galileo was persecuted for blasphemy. The Edsel was supposed to revolutionize motoring. The idea of graphics as used in Xerox's GUI interface was a non-starter in the face of IBM's PC, but became the heart of Apple's success and the primary component of interactivity today. The internet's IP went largely unusued for years, and now we're running out of IP addresses.
At the time, nobody had any idea what the result would be for any of those moments in history. Now we view those legacies through the lens of today. We view all these things as parts of patterns through which we (think we) understand the world.
But these patterns are ever-changing. Our perspective evolves, and consequently so do our demands on the world (and ourselves) change. And as we learn more, and experience more, our understanding of what we experience now will have changed.
Galileo is immortalized. Apple is a business success. The Edsel has its picture in the dictionary entry for "flop." And we move on ... to look back and see our triumphs and follies -- and then our folly of believing those prior interpretations.
What will come of this blog, I have no idea. I'm not writing for the echo chamber. I'm not writing to share "the truth." I'm just trying to figure some things out, and part of that process means posting some of my questions and tentative conclusions here, thankful that there's not a Spanish Inquisition ready to lock me up, but not really sure where all this is going, just the same.
]]>At first, Xanga was kind of fun -- posting things, getting props from others, building friends' lists.... But after about a month, I got bored with it all. I just couldn't see the appeal of all this first-person storytelling. Its interactive features were limited ... and far too in-grown for my taste. It started to feel like an echo chamber, and boring at that. So I let the little blog die.
That was 2001. Yet now -- today -- I cannot imagine not blogging, or not being surrounded online by bloggers writing about themselves. I suppose I've changed a little. But I think the culture has changed ... profoundly.
About 20 months ago I started up blogging again. I was in -- let's just say a pause in my overworked working life -- and thought I'd start up a Blogger blog. I chose Blogger because it was free, and ubiquitous. Why I started it up was mainly just to rant a bit -- anonymously -- about whatever struck my mind. Soon it ended up getting rather political, which made me grateful of the anonymous choice; I would not want to meet some of the folks I encountered online. (No, I won't give over the blog's particulars. That would spoil it, now, wouldn't it?)
How far we've come since 2001. Some people like to call what we have now "Web 2.0" -- as if the internet evolved in stable releases, like Photoshop or Word. I suppose it's only natural to try to define something that eludes definition. And since there's no telling where exactly we're headed in the evolution of internet-based interactivity, the tendency is to assume that we can make like Heisenberg and know, at least, where we are.
The thing is, can we really know where we are? Do we in fact have the right perspective on the present? What's more, are we truly served by seeing history as leading up to where we stand "at the end of time," so to speak?
The patterns we see are informed by our own perspectives. It may turn out that we haven't even begun to see change in our society. How can we know, when we don't know what will be? How can we judge what has happened, when we see it all as leading up to where we are now? Aren't we flotsam trying to define oceans? Galileo was persecuted for blasphemy. The Edsel was supposed to revolutionize motoring. The idea of graphics as used in Xerox's GUI interface was a non-starter in the face of IBM's PC, but became the heart of Apple's success and the primary component of interactivity today. The internet's IP went largely unusued for years, and now we're running out of IP addresses.
At the time, nobody had any idea what the result would be for any of those moments in history. Now we view those legacies through the lens of today. We view all these things as parts of patterns through which we (think we) understand the world.
But these patterns are ever-changing. Our perspective evolves, and consequently so do our demands on the world (and ourselves) change. And as we learn more, and experience more, our understanding of what we experience now will have changed.
Galileo is immortalized. Apple is a business success. The Edsel has its picture in the dictionary entry for "flop." And we move on ... to look back and see our triumphs and follies -- and then our folly of believing those prior interpretations.
What will come of this blog, I have no idea. I'm not writing for the echo chamber. I'm not writing to share "the truth." I'm just trying to figure some things out, and part of that process means posting some of my questions and tentative conclusions here, thankful that there's not a Spanish Inquisition ready to lock me up, but not really sure where all this is going, just the same.
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