Joho the Blog: Blood on blogs

Joho the Blog: Blood on blogs

This is a great conversation about the nature of blogs.

What strikes me as interesting are the metaphors that can be played with regarding blogs, when your assumptions are that, say, _everyone_ blogged, or most people blogged regularly, and in the same manner. If that were the case, and everyone kept online diaries, the internet would very much resemble a nervous system-- a nervous system of 6 billion nervous systems.

Roger Scruton: Bring Back Stigma

City Journal Autumn 2000 | Bring Back Stigma by Roger Scruton

This article discusses the purpose of stigma in society and the effects of its obsolescence by laws, political correctness, and tolerance.

Faith-based Computing

Bad title, interesting concept. Here it is.

Having spent some time in the healthcare industry, where technophobia abounds but technology is ever more vital to everyday life, I've gotten a glimpse into how frustrating computers can be for some people. Part of this is simple lack of familiarity with the tools. Healthcare moves slowly in adopting new technology. Fear is endemic. Technology is supposed to empower people, but it tends to do the opposite when you are fearful. If you have no faith in your tools, you're paralyzed. Faith-based computing is about empowering people with the confidence that they can learn, solve problems, and find solutions to any problem that they face. It is a skill that is vital to becoming skilled at using technology.

The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward An American Information Strategy

The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward An American Information Strategy

Noopolitik is the term invented by RAND, the famous think-tank with the silliest acronym. Seriously, Research ANd Development?

Anyway, Noopolitik is the idea of the new emergent political reality created by the information age. I haven't read it all yet, but will, someday.

metablogging

it strikes me that metablogging is a phase that most bloggers eventually go through, if not something that preoccupies a lot of time for their entire career/life as a blogger.

developing a voice on your blog is essential. taking a voice that is unnatural for you can turn you off blogging pretty quickly.

for this blog, i plan on maintaining a fairly informal tone, but we'll see what happens.

an observation about online social networks: participating in newsgroups, blogs, forums etc. leads to encountering people with knowledge that you do not possess on a constant basis. no other social atmosphere has this property - where you could, with minimal effort, be faced with hundreds or even thousands of new ideas in a day of internet research. reading on the internet is very different from reading a book, where ideas are stretched over pages and chapters. the nature of the net allows time to be divided into split-seconds of attention, rather than minutes or hours like with a book. if you wanted, you could speedily review a webpage without even reading the text, and indeed this is a mechanism which people might employ to reduce "overload".

a characteristic i had not thought about before is that encountering so many new ideas through ones computer, each one put there by another human being, is that it gives a false impression of the intelligence of other people. you start to think that everyone knows everything about everything. when someone points out something you didn't know about your favourite subject, it can be a challenge for your ego. it's difficult to pretend you're an expert on anything, when 5 minutes of research on the internet will find someone who is more knowlegeable.

ideablog is born

This blog is about ideas.

I will post things I think about, observations from my day, things that piss me off, things that I don't understand, but want to. This blog is about making sense of the world.

But with each post I hope to ask the important questions, and attempt to get to the heart of the matter, to focus on what's important.

This is not a blog to nitpick, to rant, or complain.

This is not a place to question the integrity of other people, or to tear down personalities. This is a place to talk about the ideas that shape our world.

What do you believe but can't prove to be true?
What do you know, but never talk about?
What motivates you to get up in the morning?
What would happen if your greatest wish became reality?

Got any great ideas?