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Well...I'm at FL 350 (otherwise known as 35,000 feet mean sea level) on a United flight to LAX. Sitting in Economy Plus. Seat 11F. Listening to my iPod Nano (black) which is loaded with tunes from the 70's and 80's. I'm wearing a loud hawaiin shirt (what are you wearing?). The in-flight movie is a date-flick, and I don't want to consider the overweight guy next to me as my date...so that's out of the question (sorry buddy). Somehow, this confluence of karmic circumstances leaves me feeling compelled to start a Blog. Dive right into the Blogsphere. Get all Blogged up. Putting on the Blog. I'll be Blog-tied!
"The Hypocrits are slandering the sacred halls of truth"
My iPod is on shuffle, and Rush: Farewell to Kings starts just as I'm starting to write. Really. The above line is playing as I start typing. I couldn't make this up. Enough with the Karma already.
Some of us may not be young anymore, and perhaps we're not as hip as many on the net (well, not me, but people I know). So there's some chance I just don't get it. But, when I was a young professional [hitches up pants] academics were respected for research and facts, vetted by peer review. Journalists may have been a bit on the sensational anti-current side, but basically were backstopped by some sense of journalistic integrity and verifying their sources (except for tabloids, but I believe they come from a parallel dimesion where a particular bend in the space time continuum leads to truth being proportional to celebrity fleshtone). Professionals mostly used facts and experience to guide their decisions, and we respected their opinions based on their background. Whethere Academic, Journalist or Professional, you couldn't get published (and thus spread your wisdom) without adhering to some form of validation.
Enter the Blogsphere. Anyone can publish online. I'm doing it, and goodness knows I have no credentials...I don't even have good grammar or punctuation.
I know what you're thinking: "people have been able to do that for years with personal web pages and the like" (I know about your other thoughts too, and I'm telling your mother). There is, I think, a difference. A subtle shift that makes a big difference. I don't think it's the tools that let people update their weblogs more easily than in the old days of rolling your own html in your favourite text editor (mine was vi, what was yours?). It's the increasingly automated interconnection of weblogs and referencing to each other that makes a difference. I think. Just as a forecast number that is written on paper is suspect, but put in an excel spreadsheet becomes fact, and if quoted from an analyst's spreadsheet is dogma, successive publications seems to bootstrap credibility.
Now, add in the fact, that the so-called Blogsphere also spends a percentage of it's editorial space reinforcing the concept that the there is such a thing as the Blogsphere to start with, and that there's a shared editorial conscious manifest in RSS syndicated blogs that embues them with credibility.
So, yes, I am venting my spleen. It feels much better now. Thanks for asking.
"what have you got, at the end of the day? What have you got, to take away?" - Dire Straits: Private Investigations...from my Karmic iPod as I finish this.
Irony. I love irony. I think most people have an irony deficiency...there should be a multivitamin that supplies your recommended daily irony. In fact, think of this blog as your irony suppliment. My goal is simple: to rant whatever comes to my mind until at least one other blog starts referencing me. Then I'm in. I'll be in the Blogsphere. An infiltrator. Who knows what happens next - I leave that to Karma. I may not make it back alive...I could become part of the collective. I could become a voice in the online wilderness calling for separation of fact from opinion. I could simply provide some interesting perspectives on things. I could learn to write better. But hopefully, at a minimum, I will amuse.
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2/8/06 1:57 PM