2006-02-11

Blogging 4tw

For the world is changing: i feel it in the water, i feel it in the earth, and i smell it in the air. --Treebeard, The Lord of the Rings

Last night we had a discussion on the IRC channel #tolkien about how bloggers are exhibitionist, modest at best writers to whom discussing details of their sex life in their blog is a way to feel accepted. I guess that's just the characteristic of obscenity in the postmodernity - like noted by some philosopher or deconstructionist, was it Baudrillard or Lyotard maybe - the private becomes public. Of course, getting comments in one's blog is a good way to feel important for anyone. I don't know if blogging is cool any more now that it is moving to mainstream, some say it's cool to think that blogs aren't cool. Anyway, as a result of this encouraging discussion I finally mustered the courage to start my very own and very first blog!

The background runs deeper, though. I first was introduced to computer mediated communication (CMC) in the very late 80's with the day's BBS world. Already at that time I was quite hooked to CMC. A few years after that I enrolled at the university and gained access to Internet with Usenet news, e-mail, the web, IRC, MUDs and so on. A few years before I graduated from Theoretical Philosophy and behavioural sciences I started working in the booming IT sector. After a somewhat problematic phase of trying to work on Windows, Lotus Notes and ASP, I had an opportunity to put my long love for Unix and freshly gained Linux skills into productive use.

Things have rolled on since those years, and sometimes it feels us old farts have been left behind, not having been a part of the growing cultures of IRC galleries, mobile services, instant messaging services, VOIP, RSS feeds, and blogging. The recent introduction of the Nokia 770 internet tablet may be seen symptomatic as it appears to be squarely targeted for heavy users of these services. As much as us Finnish IT sector old timers like Linux, we have not adopted these new means of communication, which I think can lead us to underestimate the importance of internet tablet devices in current markets. We live in a complex, dynamic world, where the socially and professionally most succesful individuals will be the ones that make the best use of the available means of communication and social networking. For a person that has a strong background in the humanities, experimenting with these new forms of communication is then a logical step.

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