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11th June 2006

From the sublime to the “Gee, really?”

Jon Husband, co-founder of Qumana, is one of those people who hangs out there in the world of the internecks doing great work and making me feel guilty for not having his energy and focus. A website, an effort of Jon’s that’s not getting enough of my attention, is Thermo[SAT]. A year or so ago David Weinberger made the general comment to all of us that he is not reading our blogs. I knew what he meant, and while of course I was pissed that he wasn’t hanging on my every word, that he wasn’t concerned about my cat or what I had for breakfast, I could dig it. There are scores and scores of blogs by brilliant and creative people making an effort to annotate their own lives online. Who has time for all of them? Besides Scoble, of course. I think my New Year’s resolution (on June 11th this year) will have to be to pay more attention to the Wirearchy blog and Thermo[SAT].

In the ho-hum department, Robert Scoble’s changing jobs. I took the long way around for this news… Scoble, I’ve heard, is a wonderful guy, but basically his auto-human-aggregator schtick never interested me much so I seldom visit his blog. So I was at Thermo[SAT] for the update on Net Neutrality, not satisfied with what Doc Searls had provided by way of reflection, and I saw that the highly selective Thermo[SAT] “blogliste” contains a link to Terry Heaton, so I clicked through and there was the news about Scoble. Clicking back to get the links for this post, I saw that Jon had already covered it, so okee dokee… Scoble is leaving Redmond and headed for the Bay Area. That’s nice, I guess. The bloggers and vloggers are tootling this news from the rooftops. This shift reminds me of that scene in that movie where the guy says,

Gozer the Traveller will come in one of the
pre-chosen forms.  During the rectification
of the Vuldronaii the Traveller came as a
very large and moving Torb.  Then of course
in the third reconciliation of the last of
the Meketrex supplicants they chose a new
form for him, that of a Sloar.  Many Shubs
and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in
the depths of the Sloar that day I can tell
you.

No offense Robert. Good luck!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 11th, 2024 at 2:25 and is filed under Creative Arts, People, Web Publishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 3 responses to “From the sublime to the “Gee, really?””

We invite you to comment!

  1. 1 On June 12th, 2024, Charles Follymacher said:

    A bit from Rob’s June 11 entry (about his new company):

    “It is the dream of many entrepreneurs around the world to come to Sand Hill Road and talk a venture capitalist out of a few million dollars to start a company.”

    Frank, could you loan me $20 to register a domain? I think this might be the year of the blog.

  2. 2 On June 12th, 2024, Frank Paynter said:

    Well, sure. I’ll of course need a seat on your board and we’ll have some due diligence to do… a packet has been crated and shipped Fed Ex. When you have filled out the forms, Skype my answering service and we’ll see about setting up an appointment for the ritual blood letting. Bring your first born.

  3. 3 On June 13th, 2024, Jon Husband said:

    Thanks, Frank, for the kind words. I suffer seriously from imposter’s syndrome, in that I used to be very earnest about trying to point out that there was something big (and really different) up, or at least possible, with all this linkage stuff. Not so much anymore, but the gathering changes to our collective sociology still fascinate me.

    There are many many many brilliant people who blog and on these Internets, and I have learned much from those whom I am lucky enough to have come across or gotten to know - for example, J. Alva, Brian, Euan, Jeneane, Dave Rogers, Doc and David W., Earl Mardle, Biurningbird Shelley, the jocular Tutor of course, interim Tom, the incomparable Hardy Boys of the web (RB and Golby), Peter the Other, Arvin Hill, Steve Gilliard, the honesty, integrity and depth of knowledge of Juan Cole .. and so many others.

    What frustrates me is the ongoing efforst on the part of most people to figure it all out, to business-ify it all (including me and my colleagues at Qumana, but if I don’t figure something out some day before I die I’ll have to go on the dole). What is happening is big, and the patterns are all there for us to see. I like Doc and especially david w’s and your consistent pointage to socially constructive possibilities and initiatives. There is so much that can be done .. and so much to do.

    So I have some time ago ceased to try to come up with any “original” or more-clever-than-the-next observation. I do like pointing out interesting and or confounding and/or dissonant stuff, but more especially I think more and more people should take responsibility for using this great gift of interconnectd hyperlinks to keep very bright lights shone on the people who shamelssly use rhetoric to keep people around the world scared, confused and complacent … in other words, the corporate media and the snakes in the current administration. To an outsider (in Canada), the abuse of your citizenry (and increasingly ours via a sycophantic conservative PM)) seems brazenly shameless.

    Orwell’s 1984 is no longer fiction, but a documentary, imo.

    SAT (the Society For Arts and technology) in Montreal is really nifty .. an open-minded, progressive and quite cutting-edge place for digital artists and human, in-the-flesh social networks melded with links and initiatives all over the world. It gave me enormous pleasure to be able to introduce J. Alva and bmo to the place and its people, and to be able to watch J. Alva’s wonderful digital art being pumped out to 15-foot hifh wall screens, with the music moving through state of the art sound systmes. I think he liked it and had fun, too, but i hesitate to speak for him.

    Thanks again for the recognition. It’s warm.

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