I'm not 100% sure yet. More than anything, it's simply that I have a strong conviction this is something I need to do, just as in the mid 90s I had a similar conviction that I HAD to buy a PC and get on the Net; it was important, though I couldn't articulate exactly why. And it's the same motivation that led me to need not just a notebook PC, but specifically an Apple, despite never having owned or used one for any significant amount of time before.
I'll go further, though words are frustratingly hard to assemble into anything coherent today. Some days my writing flows like milk that's been left in the sun for 2 days.
It's not a techno-fascination thing. Yeah, I'm a techo for a living -- I'm a data analyst, designer, programmer, whatever specialising in Oracle -- and I love gadgets and elegant, cool stuff. But I repeat, it's not that.
The nearest I can put it is that now and then I see something happening that I know is going to be one of those forces that changes for the better the way we live or work (re-reading this I've noticed the explicit distinction I made between life and work) and I want to be part of it as it unfolds.
The Web was such a force. Apple maybe isn't in itself, but the whole open-source, open-standards, open-access, ubiquitous networking thing is -- think MP3, XML, RSS, Jabber, 802.11 -- and Apple seems to be adopting and aligning with it, rather than fighting it all the way. So, owning an Apple is a pleasant way for me to be a part of that. And, as a bonus, I feel, so much more than I have lately on MS Windows, that this is MY machine, running MY software, managing MY data, under MY control.
And blogging? OK, I'll admit right now I'm still heavily under the influence of recently absorbed ideas from David Weinberger and Chris Locke (I'll figure out how to do links a little later), and still shaking my head at the sheer genius of Chris's prose. After discovering email around 10 years' ago, I quickly realised that this was a space where I could find and talk in my true voice. I'm shy and inarticulate in person with all but my closest friends and my brain just doesn't work in the right way for structured, more-formal compositions. I can take literally weeks to write a 5,000-word design document, yet manage a 2,000-word email in 3 hours.
So, I think that my blog is another place where I might talk in my true voice. And unlike email, I can reach unlimited numbers of other people because my words are going to be "out there". And by reach, I don't mean the essentially one-way communication afforded by a web page, but instead a proper conversation. Or many overlapping conversations perhaps.
And if this is true for me, it must be true for many, many others too. This thing is only going to grow. I think this, or something like it, is how we'll choose to talk as individuals to the world.
And remember, it's a network because we're reading other blogs, embedding links to them in our own, we have automated feeds and subscriptions. And if the value of a network rises exponentially with the number of nodes, what kind of thing is it going to evolve into? What value will it create? I'm not at all sure but I think it's going to be good, possibly revolutionary. I want to help make it happen.
4:05:19 PM 
|
|
