The Downside

I discovered early in my life that I have a gift for criticizing things. No matter what you’re talking about, I can find a downside to it. If I won the Lotto, I’d complain that I have to pay 1/2 of it in taxes, and that Bush will probably spend that money paying Halliburton to build another prison in Iraq, next to the still broken-down water purification plant. When Christmas rolls around, I lament the commercialization of the holiday and how sick and tired I am of hearing the same carols year after year. When I travel, I criticize the ever-changing security procedures at LAX and how poorly documented they are, so you only know what’s going on if you actually ask a security guard.

Does all this mean I’m a pessimist? Perhaps. You can make up your own mind from this blog as I progress.

I’ve been working on this creature we call the Internet for 10 years, and only now am I getting around to starting my own blog. To tell you the truth, I don’t really like blogs. I don’t even read my friends’ blogs, and honestly I’m not expecting my friends to read this blog. There are far too many bloggers who go on and on about their family or what they had for lunch that day or what movies they want to see this weekend. I only care about such things if I’m already a close friend of yours, and if I am a close friend of yours, I’d rather talk to you to catch up with your life than read about it on the web.

Perhaps we can chalk that up to my ADD. We’ll discuss that later on. Personally, I think it’s because you don’t get the “color” by reading something on the web - if I want to learn about your life, I want to hear what you have to say, ask you questions, and have a real conversation. Reading a blog is primarily a one-way conversation, aside from the highly asynchronous “comments” that lend an iota of life to the whole institution.

But here I am anyway. And now that I think about it, why am I doing this? I believe that, despite any pessimistic leaning, I have some observations on the world that I’d like to share. Particularly, observations about Media, Marketing, and Technology, probably the three professional/industrial worlds that I’m closest to in my everyday life. This unholy trinity does have some great things to offer, but they are also abused, and I’d like to take this opportunity to examine how MM&T affect our lives. More often that not, I find that they have a bigger impact than I first recognized.

My next post: Why Wikipedia just doesn’t matter

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 at 11:44 am and is filed under Blogs, Me. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.