Tag: Web, Blogging and Computers

Blogs Fringe

Via Michael – why do people get upset when they are told that blogging is fringe, that only maybe 50,000 to 100,000 are actually writing anything on the internet semi-regularly? Having a hobby is good. Not everyone is cut out for the rough and tumble of stamp collecting or toothpick bridge building. Blogs are no different.

Oh…you thought it made you important and a mover and shaker? Oh, dear.

Home Awake

Being the only one in the house not sick or three, I am the only one awake this afternoon. I find myself listening to Acts of Volition Radio show #6, watching the sunny melty day outside moving on, wondering whether it would be so wrong downloading Counterstrike for moments like this, surrounded by the snoring, communicating only with headphones and screen.

[Four gerunds and a gerundive in one sentence…wow.]

Futurist Nut Bars

So why is Tod Maffin so smart? I was driving along on Saturday afternoon not really listening to DNTO and – WHAMMO – Sook Yin Lee says Tod’s going to tell us that blogs are dead already. Here is the promo for the piece:

And Tod Maffin dives into the world of blogging. Like everything on the web, what began as a grassroots movement it’s suddenly become corporate. Is this the end for web diaries as we know it?

Isn’t there a rule that anyone who calls himself a futurist isn’t? Or at least goes somewhat nuts. But then today there is Dave3, also a smartie pants, saying, to get the news, he is going to give up reading everything but blogs. [Maybe he’s on an all rice crispy diet.]

I am confused. In the days before the future, when I was a kid, the characteristics of the future where unlike today – food would be in tubes, we’d use personal jet packs and clothes would be all silvery. I sure as hell didn’t expect that I would have to rely on self-appointed wackos with bandwidth for the news any more than I thought 13 factories would supply all the meat for the vast majority of prople in the USA [a frightful fact I heard on talk radio last night] or that most food in the store would rely on killer transfats. It is starting to look like eating real food and relying on good new sources are the kinds of things that will make you an outcast in the new next future.

I tire of this. Why don’t futurists tell stories like

around 2012 people will get sick and tired of self-appointed gurus consulting to government on untendered contracts [supported by 25% finder fees] advising upon which leaders and stakeholders needed input…and will kick the bums out.

Though its unlikely as 98% of cheques to futurists are sign by the bums, that’s a future I’d like to see. Then, again, now that I think of it…maybe it’s happening now in Ottawa in 2004. The wheels may be coming off of one guy’s particular future as we watch right now.

Carnival #10

David’s got the
ninth tenth Carnival of Canucks up this
morning. [Ten…I remember when it was only seven…]

He links to an interesting thread over at Damian’s blog about the Toronto
Star sending an email seeking deletion of pasted text
from the paper. As I quote freely from the Star and have not read such an
email, I am greatly put out. I am becoming more interested in section 29.1 of
our Copyright Act and may have to revisit my thinking on Digital Management
Rights as we Canadians seem to have a little ruled upon exception to the
enforcability of copyright which could arise in any context.