Unix shell commands wrapped up as Automator actions. Now that could be cool.
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/protectingtheblogosp.html
Mon, 23 May 2005 21:26:54 -0500
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/protectingtheblogosp.html
Blogging
Media
World
demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)
Mark Bernstein writes from Blogtalk Downunder about the need to protect, appreciate and cultivate the blogosphere lest we accidentally ruin it. At 78 slides it sounds like Mark had a lot to say, but the core of his talk seems to have revolved around this:
In particular, bloggers need to
Mark Bernstein writes from Blogtalk Downunder about the need to protect, appreciate and cultivate the blogosphere lest we accidentally ruin it. At 78 slides it sounds like Mark had a lot to say, but the core of his talk seems to have revolved around this:
In particular, bloggers need to understand that discovering and linking to a new, little-known weblog is an especially fine thing to do, while repeatedly linking to the A List may be actively harmful. Providing fresh lists — what you’re reading, what you’d like to see, where you plan to go — is a gift to the Web. So is hard work and finely crafted writing. Sloppiness and second-rate thinking, on the other hand, does damage.
I frankly don’t know if we need to protect, appreciate and cultivate the “blogosphere,” principally because I’m skeptical that such a thing exists in the first place, and if it does I think it’s probably a transient phenomenon. As personal publishing tools become more widely adopted and integrated into people’s work and personal lives, I think the concept of some “special space” where this publishing occurs will largely fade away - much as the concept of the web itself as that special space has started to fray and tatter. It all seems a bit to me like calling the network of all telephones and the conversations held over that network the “telephonoshpere” and getting all sweaty about how the telephone enabled “personal real-time verbal messaging.” In short, I think we’re taking ourselves a bit too seriously.
Mark’s comment concerning linking to A-list bloggers set me to thinking - and doing a little research on my own reading and linking habits. It turns out that I link to A-listers very infrequently, mostly because I read A-listers very infrequently. On the one hand, I tend to agree that there probably is something very positive about discovering and linking to the new and little known, if only because of the potential to broaden one’s own reading and thinking horizons.
On the other hand, I find the writing of most of those considered A-listers to be often self-serving and self-referential, and when it isn’t, it’s mundane, or defensive, or snarky. I just don’t find most of it that interesting. But hey, I don’t watch Survivor or follow the antics of Paris Hilton, either. I know there are those who find the often high-flying, soap-opera like lives of many of the A-listers fascinating, and track them the way people track other celebrities (because that, after all, is what they are.) Doing so doesn’t make them bad people, it just means they’re interested in something different than I am, and it’s unlikely our interests are going to intersect much.
Equally however, I find the seemingly never ending rants of those who feel compelled to attack the so-called power structure of the A-list equally boring, and faintly ridiculous. Really, folks, there isn’t any power structure there, and pretty nearly everything that seems a big deal in the “blogosphere” just isn’t out where most people live and work. Again, we’re taking ourselves way, way too seriously. Almost none of what the supposedly disenfranchised seem up in arms about has any real impact, anywhere. Much blogging is largely just people getting emotional and venting in public, things that have been happening for thousands of years. It’s just people being interested in different things than you are, and that can only have an impact on you if you let it. Nothing any A-list blogger has ever written or done has ever cost me a job, damaged my marriage, hurt my kids, whipped my dog, or cost me a red cent. But again, hey, if you get your jollies by raging against “The Man” in what you perceive to be his new form, far be it from me to get in your way.
I’m a little embarrassed to have given this much writing and thinking space to this, so I’m going to wrap it up. It seems to me that there are those who see this thing called the “blogosphere” and perceive it to have a lot to do with power, and popularity, and influence, and who seem hell-bent on trying to be part of it or influence the course of it to their own ends, or protest against it’s perceived inequities. There are those who seem very caught up in trying to create cults or personality within this “blogosphere.”
From where I sit, I’m having trouble seeing any sphere, blogo- or not. I see a new set of communications tools that allow people to talk about things and interact in ways that entirely mirror the larger culture and society. Sometimes what I have encountered are any number of interesting and quite creative people using these technologies to communicate more effectively and efficiently; something the species has been doing since language was first invented. Most of the rest of it is just us apes chattering at each other, most of which just doesn’t amount to or matter very much, and probably doesn’t deserve a whole lot of attention.
But at the end of the day we’re just using some new tools to do what we’ve always done. If you want to get caught up in the popularity contest be my guest; you must get something out of it to expend so much energy on it. I’m more interested in finding interesting people and having good conversations with them, which is what I suspect Mark’s talk really boils down to.
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/macleodoncapitalisma.html
Sun, 21 Aug 2005 16:39:57 -0500
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/macleodoncapitalisma.html
Politics
Books
demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)
I really enjoy Ken MacLeod’s writing, and I’m finding more and more I’m enjoying his thinking and his politics. From a recent blog post titled “Does Capitalism Exist? Did Socialism?:”
The persisting ‘pre-capitalist’ relations, as well as the bureaucracies of actually existing socialism and the state interventions of actually existing
I really enjoy Ken MacLeod’s writing, and I’m finding more and more I’m enjoying his thinking and his politics. From a recent blog post titled “Does Capitalism Exist? Did Socialism?:”
The persisting ‘pre-capitalist’ relations, as well as the bureaucracies of actually existing socialism and the state interventions of actually existing capitalism, are thus their defining, rather than deforming, features. What if, in short, the theoretical imperfections of each system are the system(s)?
Which is an amazingly eye-opening observation, when you think about it.
