Rainy Days
Oct. 9th, 2005 02:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljpliceaseToday was miserable as far as the weather is concerned. So I went to see the new Wallace and Gromit movie. Definitely good enough to pay matinee prices on an otherwise bleak Saturday. I haven't gone to see a movie by myself in a long time, and I felt vaguely odd watching a movie which seemed to be popular most with children, but I am a fan of the makers of the short films and I'm glad that I saw this one, though I have to say that I enjoyed Chicken Run much more.
But here I am reading [1] about this geek/entrepreneur in the Economist who had the good sense to make blogs searchable, and left the big boys Google and Yahoo! scratching their heads wondering, "why didn't we think of that?" [2] So I wonder, how am I going to make my mark on history? Probably I won't. The whole point of working for a big corporation like The Company is that your ideas don't belong to you anymore, they belong to The Company, and my move to Australia is geared toward giving up on doing something innovative and accepting that it is more important to live in a place with nice weather, a real safety net, and to be happy [3].
Geeky things that I am interested in include interface design and (currently at least) Wikipedia. Good interface design is difficult, and I will be the first to admit that I don't know how to make technology simple enough to be actually usable. There isn't much in the way of technology which hasn't become too complicated over the years, and it makes me what to quit my job and move to a small island in the Pacific and... well okay, a big island in the Pacific... and forget the whole thing.
Wikipedia (and wikis in general) on the other hand seems like a true waste of time. I read about Joshua Chamberlain's defense of Little Round Top for a while, then I point out that someone is being Autobotcentric in the Autobot Matrix of Leadership page [4], and finally I make edits to random articles for a while and before I know it it's time to go to sleep already, or maybe even well past.
Like most technology is suffers from the fact that it is too complicated. When I posted the invitation to my next party on my own wiki, lots of people RSVPed, but almost nobody did so using the wiki itself [5]. Still, by the standards of other hopelessly complex technologies, it isn't too bad. It is simply a way of editing content on a web site through your web browser. Pretty ho-hum stuff if you think about it; I suspect publications such as the Economist won't find it as interesting as weblogs, until the rich folk can figure out a way to make money on it.
Naomi Klein talked about so called culture jammers who used mass media to comment negatively on mass media, using the medium itself. Part of her thesis was that culture jammers wanted to talk back to big corporations like McDonalds and Shell Oil in a media landscape where that wasn't legally permissible. I was so impressed with Naomi Klein and her book that I went all the way down to NYC after work one day to see her debate somebody she had offended at the Economist. I respect both Klein and the Economist, but have to say that Klein trounced her opponent that day.
Anyway, it occurs to me that one of the things that I like about Wikipedia is that it blurs, by its very nature, the distinction between reader, writer and editor. You can quite easily "talk back" to Wikipedia and by doing so, make a contribution. You can even do it completely anonymously.
[1] //www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4484119
[2] Google and Yahoo have since released their own web based blog search engines, but apparently they leave something to be desired.
[3] And not simply, as one morose Dane once put it, "to be."
[4] I have long believed that the Decepticon's reputation has been besmerched by a long history of Autobot propaganda.
[5] It made me sad.
But here I am reading [1] about this geek/entrepreneur in the Economist who had the good sense to make blogs searchable, and left the big boys Google and Yahoo! scratching their heads wondering, "why didn't we think of that?" [2] So I wonder, how am I going to make my mark on history? Probably I won't. The whole point of working for a big corporation like The Company is that your ideas don't belong to you anymore, they belong to The Company, and my move to Australia is geared toward giving up on doing something innovative and accepting that it is more important to live in a place with nice weather, a real safety net, and to be happy [3].
Geeky things that I am interested in include interface design and (currently at least) Wikipedia. Good interface design is difficult, and I will be the first to admit that I don't know how to make technology simple enough to be actually usable. There isn't much in the way of technology which hasn't become too complicated over the years, and it makes me what to quit my job and move to a small island in the Pacific and... well okay, a big island in the Pacific... and forget the whole thing.
Wikipedia (and wikis in general) on the other hand seems like a true waste of time. I read about Joshua Chamberlain's defense of Little Round Top for a while, then I point out that someone is being Autobotcentric in the Autobot Matrix of Leadership page [4], and finally I make edits to random articles for a while and before I know it it's time to go to sleep already, or maybe even well past.
Like most technology is suffers from the fact that it is too complicated. When I posted the invitation to my next party on my own wiki, lots of people RSVPed, but almost nobody did so using the wiki itself [5]. Still, by the standards of other hopelessly complex technologies, it isn't too bad. It is simply a way of editing content on a web site through your web browser. Pretty ho-hum stuff if you think about it; I suspect publications such as the Economist won't find it as interesting as weblogs, until the rich folk can figure out a way to make money on it.
Naomi Klein talked about so called culture jammers who used mass media to comment negatively on mass media, using the medium itself. Part of her thesis was that culture jammers wanted to talk back to big corporations like McDonalds and Shell Oil in a media landscape where that wasn't legally permissible. I was so impressed with Naomi Klein and her book that I went all the way down to NYC after work one day to see her debate somebody she had offended at the Economist. I respect both Klein and the Economist, but have to say that Klein trounced her opponent that day.
Anyway, it occurs to me that one of the things that I like about Wikipedia is that it blurs, by its very nature, the distinction between reader, writer and editor. You can quite easily "talk back" to Wikipedia and by doing so, make a contribution. You can even do it completely anonymously.
[1] //www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4484119
[2] Google and Yahoo have since released their own web based blog search engines, but apparently they leave something to be desired.
[3] And not simply, as one morose Dane once put it, "to be."
[4] I have long believed that the Decepticon's reputation has been besmerched by a long history of Autobot propaganda.
[5] It made me sad.
