Letter to Andy
December 11th, 2005
cata-wha?
Andy -
I was cleaning the kitchen and started wondering what you were up to - so i popped on to the infoweb and looked up your site. Glad to see that you’re back to updating it. Regarding personal websites, I share your question:
“Am I simply adding to the massive waves of trivial information we crank out at an alarming rate?”
Man, that’s a question that I have asked myself on more than one occasion, like here:
http://www.bluno.org/2005/02/reset.html
I have lost track of the number of starts and re-starts, do-overs, and clean-slates with my little webspace, each time thinking I could make it interesting and/or useful to friends and strangers alike, and each time feeling a bit weird about it.
I am fascinated by the medium, alternately engaged and appalled. I am struck by the power and ease websites and blogging tools make for people to communicate, to have a voice, and to network; Frequently finding useful, interesting, and entertaining bits, but startled at the amount of pointless information; Glad to be able to check in with friends so easily, but occasionally depressed at the thought of so many lives being lived (seemingly) entirely through a computer screen.
For all the good and bad, I keep coming back to it.
In the stapled and xeroxed and stamped days, we’d make a zine with a very specific audience in mind, ship them out and be thrilled at the responses and creativity in return.
But when we post something to a website, we don’t have much (any?) control on directing it to a certain audience and it seems too public, or not authoritative, or important enough for the nearly 1 BILLION people with access to the web (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm). It can be really, really weird if you think about it too much.
All of which is to say - don’t think about it too much. Don’t self edit more than you would if you expected to only mail out 50 copies of the message. That’s what makes what you have to say good to read.
Now, I am going to tweak my neglected site for a bit, or maybe sit out in the sun for a little while first.
