Not the way, or you're doing it wrong.
That last post is not an example of how to write to a web log effectively. Why not good? Partly bad luck: a large and irreducible subject caught in a period of rapid development. Nearly every day brought about changes I felt I needed to absorb and integrate. Of course part of what is taken as bad luck is poor planning. A series of posts each focusing on a part of the FCC's new look and feel would have been more sensible. At a point in the middle of the reading. I came to the dawning conclusion, that I didn't really know the subject matter and its history well enough to write anything penetrating and insightful. Leaving the post mainly to summary and description. I also became aware that the British were in a near parallel debate on broadband policy, and taking a somewhat different direction on it. It wasn't possible to incorporate this, though there's always another day. I read as I was finishing that post that Fox news' Glenn Beck was engaged in a perverse incomprehensible and thoroughly demagogic campaign against Net Neutrality Glenn Beck's war on the FCC (and Satan worshippers). It was to late to make any reference to this. What could one say anyway? Glenn Beck is a tool! I also didn't mention the FCC's weblog Blog - Reboot.FCC.gov . The little gem in the whole sprawling site, where people like Austin Schlick, General council of the FCC, and Chairman Genachowski write publicly intended re-statements of their general policy and intentions. Actually it appears that each separate initiative -- net neutrality Blog-OpenInternet.gov (nice use of CamelBack, very techy) and broadband policy etc -- has its own weblog as well. The more I read, the more I became aware of what I didn't know. At the same time I realized that the sure certainty that you know exactly what to write about something, the initial surge of confidence to write, rests largely if not entirely on what you don't know about it.
I've been tired and distracted. It was a long winter and a dull hazy spring. As it is the job that pays the rent and all. If I have to parcel out energy according to principles of conservation I give it to the library, the sharp fences, and DMZ's I keep built there. The library and the Balsa wood model bridge industry at least.
My nephew Grant is off to something called the Science Olympiad this weekend with his team from North Bethesda middle school
2010 National Tournament | Science Olympiad. The finals are being held at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, so the whole affair is a bit of an adventure for them. One of his several events is something called "elevated bridge" which involves a small stylized balsa wood bridge which has to clear 15 centimeters ought to weigh somewhere in the vicinity of 20 grams yet take a dead load of 15 kilograms. Having spent some amount of time garden-mulching ideas, and work-benching things with him, I am prepared to say: "It ain't as easy as it sounds. " Beyond this small assortment of tasks my ability to concentrate has felt to me the way my legs feel when I'm trying to pedal the bike back up the the last hill home on a Friday afternoon (because every day is" bike to work day"). Lactic acid fatigue of the brain.
A number of subjects got bypassed while I was mired in that post. Some I can still get to, others well no loss.
One suggests itself now. WFMU's Monday evening talk show Too Much Information's coverage of ROFLCON II a few weeks ago Playlist for Too Much Information with Benjamen Walker - May 3, 2010. With an all volunteer radio station working on the model of a college station it is one thing to do a music show: it takes an hour of prep to do an good hour of radio. Preparation for a talk show is easily triple that. I applaud host Ben Walker for the attempt, but am sure he is quite mad for that. RoflCon -- Rolling On the Floor Laughing Convention -- is dedicated to that humor of distraction: Internet Memes. How to make them, how to make it (but not break it) with them. To me it is a semblance of humor -- like late night talk shows. If Jay or David seem to be having a good time, why not laugh. One of the interviewed stumbled over himself to to try to explain the comedy of YouTube's contribution industry. It might want to take itself as comedy, but it is merely a place that portrays itself as a spring of outrageous and folk genuine. And with that stage set presents content that bounces about and sounds-out in a plausible imitation of humor. Entirely dependant on pratfall expectation, and the shared experience of a high hit count. The uncontained viral aspect doesn't make these meme-tertaiments better it just confirms something pathogenic about their nature. It is to much a restless anxious seeking, always looking to one more link, one more video to achieve its promise. One last thought: I read something recently (I forget exactly where) that Jaron Lanier, technologist and futurist, was disappointed (concerned maybe?) in some aspects of the web's development. That rather than being a medium focused on a dialog about the future or a least the present. It has become the great tool of nostalgia. A way to pry every song, movie, toy and tv show out of our past. It does this with an efficacy not possible and rarely attempted previously, but now irresistible. Ask not for whom nostalgia tolls it tolls for thee.
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