Blog vs. Life
Well, that was a blogging crisis. Not only have I had to contend with the faint recrudescence of my music career, but also the pressure of ever more demands to turn the Play Ethic into practical solutions for specific people (technologists, organisations, universities), of which the Bristol Festival of Ideas was merely one. (There's more to come). All of which finite games (hitting-deadlines-for-money) provide resources for my infinite game (peace, love, universal flirtation, global post-scarcity... you know. That thing we're all interested in, these days).
But what has suffered is this showpiece blog - I was up to 400 hits a day at one point, and you can bet it's gone down from there. Part of the reason for blogging is to act as a kind of street-corner delicatessen of interesting links - which I've found that my del.icio.us page enables easily, swiftly and also usefully. (This exstip.icio.us visualising of my self-chosen knowledge categories in del.icio.us is such a cool way to picture one's interests. Fascinatingly, 'networks' is big and almost off the page - bigger than 'playtheory').
But another reason is that 1) I've become domestically wireless, and 2) this fact has revived the career of a wireless Ipaq PDA that I bought a year ago, dropped almost instantly I got it (shattering screen - natch), and which has sat in the Tech Graveyard of Early Adoption since its absurdly expensive repair, loathed and despised. Until now.
And now, as a homeworker, I'm finding a whole new emotional-spatial relationship to connectedness. I know I should be carting a proper laptop all over the place. But there's something next-20-years about carrying this little live portal of the Evernet around with me, from kitchen to couch, bed to stairs. I haven't bought a paper in days: the same time it takes me to flip through the big pages, I've tapped through the online menu. Yes, the browser's crap, and yes my thumbs ache on the keypad entry - but now I've figured out the download route, I find myself taking it outside, plugging in phones, and listening to choice BBC podcasts.
So right now, I'm too busy using the PDA as a very enjoyable electronic newspaper-cum-Ipod to do much blogging. Though I also have one of those Inspector-Gadget foldout Stowaway PDA keyboards, if the mood takes me. (Note for posterity: When I was an editor at the Herald newspaper in Glasgow, about 1997, I once took over two pages on the back to outline the 'Herald Slate' - the flat, long-lasting textual display device on which most Glaswegians would read their papers on in 2020. Like most of my flyers in that paper, it disappeared in a tumult of disinterest. But we're getting closer. Like William Gibson says: 'the future is already here - it's just unevenly distributed'. I see that Nokia are currently trying to sell us something fit-for-purpose. Still think they got it right in Minority Report).
But now that I'm living in the future, I'll try to blog more like a transhuman than a dull human. Twice a week substantially here, every day a scattershot on del.icio.us. I'll start to drip-feed what the next few months are bringing in terms of the Play Ethic.
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