The Blog Community Dream

well it seems like blogging has, for me (temporarily?) gone the way of the ... well, whatever the extinct thing was that went at the end of that colloquialism. Hmmm. It seems like as technologies emerge, I love to jump on the bandwagon around the end of the early adopters phase -- and then it either does or doesn't integrate well with my life. I'd like to dream that each time they integrate well that they improve the process -- facilitate the flow, but I'm too fond of McLuhan to be quite that naive. But like McLuhan, i'm also optimistic. Someday when this technological optimism link is blue -- that'll mean that I've devoted a back burner or two to these thoughts about how technology colonizes our imagination and how it might free it...

So here's the dream. That all the people I love decide to blog, too. That we all. together. (simultaneously - of course - while I'm on a wishlist) decide. to *be community* via the web.

Maybe the most ongoing disappointment of my life (and don't worry I'm not disappearing into a funk -- I got a good sleep and plenty of caffiene today) is the fact that my dearest friends and the people that most inspire me / love me / enrich me. Are mostly far away from me. Globalization! [andrew spits].

[andrew regrets using such a visceral gesture since it translated so thin-ly onscreen and made such a mess on his already disgusting office carpet.]

When my friend Kelly went out to LA to study -- I set up a blog for her to tell us about her experiences in LA without feeling like she was writing rambling descriptions and depositing them in our inbox unsolicited.

i thought it worked out beautifully.

i read her exploits religiously -- but whenever i wanted. sometimes i responded; mostly I didn't.

the blog seemed as redemptive a technology for the negative massification effects of web technology as was the voicemail / answering machine to redeem the telephone (connection over intrusion in both cases)

Martin Buber writes "all real living is meeting" - if the blog lets us MEET, then isn't it a life-giving force?


Since this is sorta a "metablog" anyway -- I do have to admit that one of the rich discoveries of this year's vacation was that the notion of BACK BURNER is an important one to keep me whole. I journaled a whole entry (in my private journal, Lynn, just to reassure that even people "like that" (like me) who want to "write in journals and then publish them on the web!") on what exactly a back - burner is, what ends it might serve, and how it may (or may not) move forward onto front-er burners...

But that'll have to be on another back burner!

My heart is with Mary right now who, as far as I know, is IN LABOR having a *baby*! Tell me that's not crazy. To have the disembodied knowledge that one of your dearest friends is BEARING A LIFE right now...

I started filling in random links over there on the right. But these have no referents nor categorization, but should at least enlighten and entertain...!

Peace~