I’ve upgraded Listics to WordPress 2.8. I’ve dabbled with Opera Unite. I’ve spent plenty of time on twitter, and… yes, Facebook too. Truth be told, I’ve also played too many games of Spider Solitaire.
I’ve bookmarked dozens of links to information on a panoply of web publishing tools–weapons, as some would have it, in the war between pixels and print. From social networking to search engine optimization, from the politics of pillage and plunder (from New York and Detroit to South Kivu) to this week’s twentieth anniversary of the death of I.F. Stone–my attention has dissolved in the kaleidoscopic refraction of all things imaginable to write about.
Last winter I was humbled by a brief stint writing posts for peanuts at a start-up blog that was being packaged for resale to some web media company–this in the days before the big web media companies contracted and began to sizzle like salted banana slugs on hot pavement. During that time I had a couple of reminders of my own mortality including a back injury and a heart attack. The heart attack left me somewhat subdued. I simply couldn’t find the energy to write about health care and aging, right wing militias, extremist violence, disparities in justice administration, war crimes tribunals or any of the other topics that get the adrenalin pumping and the blood of righteous indignation flowing in my somewhat obstructed arteries.
At a certain age we understand that there won’t be time for everything and there aren’t a lot of do-overs left for us. Health fails. Death ensues. The question, “How’s all that social networking working out for you?” deserves an answer. I’d like this blog to be my answer. There’s not enough time to waste it on Facebook.
And, as the woman says:
yawn internet yawn i’m building a shed
…only in my case it’s not really a shed, I have sheds-a-plenty. No, in my case it’s a vegetable garden, of which more later.
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Frank – I wasn’t aware of how seriously ill you were – I hope you’re do8ing better. While I haven’t yet stared the sickle man in the face (well not since I was 12 but that’s another story) at 60 yrs minus a month or two I fully understand where you are coming from. I don’t have the time or energy to try and understand Web 2.0 – social networks etc – at least no further than what will be useful in my job. In my personal life I’ve killed my Facebook account and have more or less retreated to my own blog – take care old friend
Thanx Doug! Those Web 2.0 kiddies keep churning out scripts and mash-ups and APIs faster than I can keep up. Find myself running in place.
Well come back, Gandalf. As you see, we kept a candle burnin in the jack o’lantern for ya. On now, up you get. A fresh sheet’s in the typer. Oh and mind that last step.
“Gandalf” is it? Ah well, better Gandalf than Racal-Vadic, I s’pose. (Somebody help me before I link again!)
I agree – go for the Veggie Garden. I never understood Twitter. How can anything with so trivial a name be anything but trivial? T’will prove to be a passing fancy I predict.
On the other hand, if you of all people become a Luddite too, then who will lead the rest of us old folk out of the dark ages? We actually purchased our first cell phone a few weeks ago. Even with both of us reading the instructions, it took the Granddaughter to put in our phone numbers and show us how to dial the darn thing.
On the other hand, not all technology is a waste of time, my best recent technology buy was garden related – a couple of motion sensing sprinkler “scarecrows”. When these sense motion, they sprays a 1 second blast of water. These ingenious devices are keeping the chickens and the rabbits and the deer out of three new flower beds. I can keep compost on the beds without the chickens digging it all up.
Hmmm, maybe these could also aid in teaching your pup to stay inside those virtual fences you’d like her to imagine. Might be worth a try.
It’s okay to be a Luddite these days! Only the misanthropic tech is bad stuff.
Let them eat eggplant.
Thanks for the Thom Pynchon Luddite article link. It made for a great read. The term Luddite has a much richer meaning for me now.