An Important Message from Joel

I'm posting a note from my friend Joel's Facebook. Please take a moment to read and reflect:

If you don't import one or more blogs using the new "blog import" feature found on the right-hand side of the screen.

I hate blogs. This is ironic, because by typing these words in this box and hitting "publish" I am participating in that sort of thing. That is, putting words on the internet for the express purpose of putting words on the internet.

I know, we like to think that blogging is about expressing ourselves, keeping in touch, showing the world how insightful we are. Certainly some of this is true. Who am I to tell someone not to express themselves?

I myself read the occasional "blog", watch the occasional "podcast", read through "wikis", and do many other things that I am sure will be viewed by successive generations in the same way that roller derby, hot-rodding, and ham radio operating is seen by ours. I find some useful information out there in the "blogosphere". There are people who put things on the internet just to help others, to share a learning experience or to create a new one.

But most blogging... most of this putting of words on the internet, the vast majority, is vanity. If you asked someone in the pre-blog era what vanity was they might have given you a definition, or perhaps referenced a celebrity. Now the best way to define that word is to show, and there is no better way than a short exploration of myspace, or facebook, or flickr, or any other venue for rapid, easy self-promotion.

The pipes have been laid down, the connections routed, the switches thrown, and we've flooded the system with as much crap as it can possibly handle. We did this to ourselves, and we won't have anyone else to blame when society finds itself lacking individuals or people with brains. As we smooth out the differences, coagulate the lone into groups with shared interests, we can't help but lose some of those finer details that differentiate human beings from a mob of people.

Sure, we'll all feel better about ourselves in the short run, and we'll all get that attention that we want so badly, but in the end that isn't going to make you a stronger or more interesting person. Go experience life beyond the electronic shadow. Share reality, learn a lesson the hard way, get burned, lose for once - it's far more interesting. And for god's sake, stop taking pictures of yourself in the mirror.

Perhaps it will evolve from here. Perhaps the web 6.0 crowd will look back with wisdom on our time the way we look back on the industrial revolution, with nostalgia for a people without self-determination, uncontrollably herded through their life in the midst of a frantic crowd. Perhaps they will have ironed out the wrinkles, and won't feel the need, en masse, to send noise into the void just to get more noise back again.

To make my blog more educational, I've added the Hindu god/goddess of the day.