Photo: the brunch at Doonies, mmm.
The Toronto restaurant Doonies doesn’t have “a blog”. Sometimes it just hits you in the face that we technologists often talk about “this stuff” all wrong. The purpose of new media, of new technology isn’t for the sake of itself it’s because of what it enables. Like at Dooney’s. Besides a fantastic eggs Benedict, go see the immensely interesting political discourse they are creating online.
My friend Joshua is a smart individual, he phrased it this way over IM today
Joshua: more than a blog. It is a protectorate.
Me: i was at an office2.0 conference in SF last week and there was much self absorbed obsession over the medium and mechanics of social media and yet no one was talking about the message. the point. [what it enables]
Joshua: marshaling, stewarding, jockeying. Blogs are conversations it is true. But they are far short of being true dialogue. No truth has so far arisen, save for the salience of hierarchy and control of flow. Other aggregators and filters have promise though.me: yes and blogs wikis and all that are still sub-perfect (esp wikis) but they’re creating conversations that weren’t happening before
I’m working on some new filters, new conversation mediums these days that grow out of this. [this is Firestoker]
I have more on this later, I may have spoken too soon about any real value seen at Office2.0Conference, but nonetheless, between this trip, conversations with Joshua and a 5 five-car mashup of connected ideas over eggs earlier this morning, my head is aswim with ideas and optimism. If I can get it all down. I may not be making any sense just yet, but Jevon was off to a good start though back when he wrote this. More to come.
The quick moral here though is that these new media may on the one hand seem like just simple-to-use communication tools but on the other hand while running a busy restaurant, the folks at dooney’s have still had the time to built a touchpoint for local civil society (defn). Powerful stuff these new media.
Tom, I really enjoyed our time together. Thank you.
It’s also a nice surprise to see our little conversation here. I have always found that the casual and time-delayed interactions in IM are an optimal source for natural and reflective pure idea sharing. Face to face conversation is highly distracting, especially if you haven’t seen the person in quite a while and are fixated not only in how they have changed but in confronting your memory mechanisms that regulate your idea of how they are changing at a distance. Voice is perhaps too fast for reflection. Blogging perhaps is perhaps still a little formal. And though the benefits of fully embodied communication cannot be overlooked; they’re just difficult to represent and appreciate in an online written environment.
IM is a nice balance. Hope to chat soon,
joshua
Tom, I really enjoyed our time together. Thank you.
It’s also a nice surprise to see our little conversation here. I have always found that the casual and time-delayed interactions in IM are an optimal source for natural and reflective pure idea sharing. Face to face conversation is highly distracting, especially if you haven’t seen the person in quite a while and are fixated not only in how they have changed but in confronting your memory mechanisms that regulate your idea of how they are changing at a distance. Voice is perhaps too fast for reflection. Blogging perhaps is perhaps still a little formal. And though the benefits of fully embodied communication cannot be overlooked; they’re just difficult to represent and appreciate in an online written environment.
IM is a nice balance. Hope to chat soon,
joshua