Net effect
IN CASE YOU WONDERED, inhabiting virtual worlds 24/7 has a downside. Our brains aren’t equipped to handle it all (though our kids’ might be). That according to last night’s panicky episode of Frontline in which a long-time advocate for fully wired living asks scientists, educators and businesspeople to confirm his hunch that 10+ hours a day of flickering media stimulation is more draining than empowering, and that the fleeting sensation of mastery it provides edges out deeper satisfactions.
I didn’t need to be told this.
Lately my media diet has left me feeling grasping and needy. I have way more avenues to share an opinion than I have actual opinions. A frantic desire for “presence” leads to exhausting cycles of posting, cross-linking and commenting, predicated on recycled content of dubious substance: Has Selleck Waterfall Sandwich been posted here today? Is Whythefuckdoyouhaveakid.com an apt ripost in this thread, even if it hasn’t been updated in days? Is my lack of interest in ____ (insert #vikings/#lost/#broganmpls) a tweetable sentiment in and of itself, or proof of my irrelevance?
And then there’s my blog: shots fired into a vacuum on a platform that flamed out in 2004. I might as well be fomenting a flash mob. In the spirit of retro squareness, maybe I’ll go sing karaoke tonight.
Abstract Archive 
karaoke tomorrow? might just have to now…
U Otter Stop Inn 2nite @ 9
Keeping a blog is keeping a record. Your intended audience isn’t contemporary twitter-ers, face-spacers, and the like, whose online presence is as permanent as who s/he is “following” or “friends” with at the moment. It’s the future unknown audience, who’ll discover and decode your blog in future, who counts.
Fortunately for archeologists of the future, I’m pretty easy to decode.