Waiting is another piece of evidence to suggest that there really is a malevolent creator, taunting us with these bizarre inventions for its own amusement ;-)

Exactly what evolutionary purpose does this evil, time and will sapping experience serve?

If you can convincingly explain the point of anything at all, I'd be most interested to hear :-)

From a selfish point of view, your blog is a source of stimulation, interest and entertainment.

Contradicting what I said above, I suspect that as creatures that have evolved intelligence, apart from propagating our genetic material the point of doing anything in life is related to communicating thoughts and ideas. A blog is a way of achieving this, unconstrained by many of the barriers that impede other forms of communication.

Posted by: Shyboy at September 25, 2003 01:21 PM

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Even so, you must admit that writing about how one has nothing to write about is scraping pretty close to the bottom of the barrel :)

Are blogs really less impeded than other forms of communication? I suppose they remove the need for simultaneity, and for physical proximity, but both of those are losses as much as gains, with the tendency to atomize the people involved. The screen, ISTM, is a barrier as much as a portal.

But maybe this a glass-half-full question. I should think about it again when I'm in a more optimistic mood.

Posted by: matt at September 26, 2003 12:23 AM

a) Your post contains more than just a statement that you have nothing to write about
b) Even that would be a meaningful post as it is indicative of your state of mind at the moment
c) Regarding the impediments presented by a blog as a means of communication, I think what I really meant is that they are different rather than fewer. As we all keep coming back to, there is no conventional, clearly defined purpose for a blog. You are free to do with it what you will.

As we have seen, others can subvert your blog and push it in a one direction or another. Although it *can* remove the need for simultaneity, that's not a given.

As for physical proximity, it is simply a way of circumventing some of the problems that distance imposes on communication.

The screen as a portal or barrier depends on where you sit. I probably take advantage of its properties as a barrier to help me break down my self-imposed barriers.

Posted by: Shyboy at September 26, 2003 07:28 AM

It is your last point that seems to hold significant appeal for a good number of people with online journals; when is Shyboy not a shy boy? Most probably when he's blogging; certainly, there are few things that I say online that I wouldn't say in real life, but it's reassuring to have another means of directed expression where what you say takes prominence over how you say it.
Suffice to say, we don't always have something to deliver, but we can present it in all its glorious nothingness and others, very often in the same boat, will seize.

Don't go anywhere.

Posted by: Stairs at September 26, 2003 09:22 AM

Far back in the mists of ancient time -- about 1997, I think -- I was at a conference on Online Entertainment in London. A swanky affair over two days at the Cafe Royal in Piccadilly, attended mostly by fairly clueless upper management, a few high-flying games developers, and (by dint of working for the people who organized it) me.

Almost the whole thing was grindingly tedious, session after session of games company executives puffing up their vapourware MMRPGs and service providers trying to persuade people to support their stupid proprietary protocols. A total buffoonorama.

In the course of the whole event, there was exactly one session worth seeing. It was the very last, given by Brian Moriarty, and it was a corker.

Brian, a veteran game designer from Infocom and Lucasarts, is a very smart man; he's also a bit of a performer. After hour after gruelling hour of tongue-tied nitwits spouting self-satisfied bollocks in the most incompetent and dreary ways imaginable, the sight of someone who not only had something intelligent to say, but also the ability to say it well, was such a blessed relief I can't begin to tell you.

There were none of your PowerPoint bullet lists here. He showed a single slide of a green laser dot for the whole hour -- I can't remember why -- and spoke beguilingly and wittily, in a manner reminiscent of Laurie Anderson, and effortlessly held the attention of the audience from beginning to end. He spun a lovely and illuminating fantasy of connectivity. He described how shared worlds might reasonably work. He wove a complex web of ideas, some insightful, some fanciful, and made it all seem plausible and coherent. He acknowledged the fanciful parts, but drew it back to reality by analogy with current trends. People want to connect, he said. If there's one thing the internet explosion tells us, it's that people want to be brought together.

Any questions?

Afterwards, I felt a bit guilty about this, because I loved his talk, and I agreed with much of it, but being the nasty, cynical person I am, I just couldn't let this rose-tinted view go unchallenged.

Just how connected is browsing the web? I asked. Even multiplayer games are a solitary activity, and they're at the more social end of the scale. The internet killer app is pornography. How social is that? Aren't most internet applications really a way of *avoiding* face to face human contact? Isn't the real lesson of the internet explosion that people want to be kept apart?

Brian was crestfallen. Spluttering, he told me that was a very sad and pessimistic view, and of course he was right. But I was shocked that someone so smart and insightful could have thought so much and so well about the subject without, apparently, considering that possibility.

Of course, to a large extent I was wrong and he was right. People *do* want to connect, as the rise of instant messaging and online dating and mobile communications prove.

They just want to do it at arm's length.

Posted by: matt at September 26, 2003 11:18 AM

I think the last line sums it up for many people. But everyone is different.

These things are all tools. Like any tool, the 'Net can be used well or badly.

I try to use my blog as a means of gently intgrating myself into the big scary world where I'm attempting to increase my direct contact with other people and break down many self (and family) constructed barriers.

But sadly, I do agree that these modern communication methods are fragmenting society. Allowing people to switch each other on and off at the touch of a button is a dangerous thing.

Posted by: Shyboy at September 26, 2003 12:07 PM

Adding musings here.

A blog, by virtue of the fact that it's designed to be read by others, is first and foremost a performance—one never has writer's block when keeping a private journal, but when I blog I constantly find myself asking two questions: Will people who read this find this amusing? And will the people I'm blogging about see this, recognize themselves, and be upset? When I feel have nothing to blog about, further examination reveals that something is getting in my way—there's something I want to blog about but am unwilling to say, there's something I want to say that seems unworthy of being expressed, etc. In those cases I usually end up blogging about the fact that I'm reluctant to blog about whatever it is, and it usually ends up being wonderfully freeing.

Of course there's also the fact that any performance, even of autobiographical material, perforce becomes fiction simply because of what we choose to leave out. I've met bloggers who were nothing like the personae writing their blogs—in some cases I've been disappointed, in some cases delighted. I don't know if the English legal system has this—over on this side of the pond, a witness in court must swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. My own blog is the truth and nothing but the truth, but it's not the whole truth. I suspect most autobiographical blogs are the same.

I also agree that in many cases, the internet fragments human connection, and, even worse, creates a sense of connection that turns out to be false—how many of us have corresponded with somebody online and then turned out to have whatever hopes we entertained dashed upon meeting the person?

At the same time, I think you're wrong, Matt, in saying that the internet killer app is pornography—I believe it's information. I jack off as much as the next guy, but I still think I Google far more than I look at dirty pictures. And in innumerable cases have found vital information that I would never have stumbled across otherwise, or that human guardians of information wouldn't have seen fit to share, or that would have taken months to find out.

And there's another way in which the net *does* create a real sense of connection and community; that is to say, for people who are struggling with some sort of problem (mental, physical, emotional), the net can be an enormously powerful reassurance that, whatever they're going through, they're not going through it alone. Mailing lists and chat rooms for depression and mood disorders, for people with illnesses that leave them housebound, etc., can allow people to remain part of the world in at least a small way.

Okay, back to writing my Holocaust musical. This morning I'm working on a lovely, uplifting number called "Hell Is Another Name For Man."

Posted by: Faustus, M.D. at September 26, 2003 03:33 PM

I agree about pornography *now* -- though it probably (I'm guessing, obviously) remains the most lucrative enterprise on the net -- but it certainly seemed to be the killer app back in 1997. The internet has followed the well-trod evolutionary path of so many media: abstruse esoterica » haven for the illicit and disreputable » the height of cool » suburban ubiquity.

As for providing community and a sense of belonging to the housebound and depressed, you are quite right. And not just to them: you don't have to be marginalized to find social networks online that provide genuine interaction based on all sorts of criteria, chosen or accidental. I hope I wasn't arguing then, and certainly wouldn't now, that online communities are non-existent or worthless. Just that they aren't any kind of panacea, and that for many kinds of interaction the net incurs some costs of its own.

As far as blogging goes, it has a tendency to feel rather one-way, and hence masturbatory. Not that I have anything against masturbation -- even doing it for an audience, if the occasion arises -- but I do have moments of wondering whether people really need to be subjected to this or that particular wank.

Whereas going over this stuff here in the comments is a different matter entirely, because you and Adam and Alastair are all part of the mix. Hmm. An image I may have some difficulty getting out my head for the rest of the afternoon...

That musical sounds like a bundle of laughs, btw :)

Posted by: matt at September 26, 2003 04:26 PM

Isn't all communication a performance of sorts, and thus subject to the same tendencies towards fiction?

I find that blogging provides a platform where it is *easier* to be honest about a lot of things that might be difficult if expressed in another situation.

Granted, it may not always be direct honesty, with some reading between the lines and prompting with comments required to elicit the whole truth.

Then there's the fact that it's somewhat less transitory than many forms of communication, especially given the existence of projects like the Wayback Machine.

Good point about support of the needy. I'd almost forgotten about that, despite the fact that I am both one of the needy and, as seems to have been case since I started using the 'Net, am currently counselling a couple of vulnerable individuals with low self-esteem.

I'm not sure how I manage to collect these people, but it seems to help all concerned :-)

Of course, we all know that the main use of the Internet is for paedophilia and terrorism. I think it should be closed down immediately. Then we'd have a world free of crime, disease, death and whatever else the media try to blame the 'Net for this week.

Posted by: Shyboy at September 26, 2003 05:15 PM

What is the Wayback Machine?

Posted by: Faustus, M.D. at September 26, 2003 07:31 PM

It's a web archive: http://web.archive.org/

Posted by: Shyboy at September 26, 2003 09:42 PM

Wow, thanks for that. Although I knew about this at an abstract level, I'd never actually tried it out. Now I can, er, downdate my Shunt link in the sidebar. How splendid.

Posted by: matt at September 26, 2003 11:52 PM