Why do I do this? Mostly, I treat this blog as an external memory, storing any content of note I find on the web, documenting any occasional interesting RealLife activities and recording my opinions on various works of media.
I write this blog purely for myself. It’s a record of what I find interesting. If someone posts an article I like I’ll either just link to it – or link AND quote that part of the article I find especially interesting – augmenting that content on occasion with links to further info and/or emphasizing those parts I find to be the major points. Quoting these parts of the articles on my blog allows me to quickly refresh my memory on the subject when I refer back to it – and it also guarantees that I’ll always have access to the info – especially if its from some newspaper that hides its old content behind a “pay wall”; or the site itself disappears at some future time.
Part of my motivation for this is that I see it as a primitive form Intelligence Augmentation. Thus, in a sense I’m uploading my thoughts, opinions and activities. I have a hope that this will just be a first step in an ongoing process. I have no idea what the end result will be, but feel this can only be discovered by actively participating and playing with and integrating what technologies become available. As well as this blog, I currently use flickr to store my photos, Last.FM to track what music I listen to and Twitter to upload state-vectors.
I often feel like I am writing this across time, something like what’s addressed in the notion of the SuperPublic, specifically:
What does it mean to speak across time and space to an unknown audience? What happens when you cannot predict who will witness your act because they are not visible now, even though they may be tomorrow?
We learn through playing. Come play with me.