I've never understood the point of blogs. The only ones I'm genuinely interested in following are art blogs, and those hardly count as blogs in the first place. At least not in the sense that this is a blog. This is a lot of words and thoughts and things that instead of writing down in a diary for contemplating on their own, people assume other people really want to know how their day went and exactly what happened and read their little anecdotes of the day.
And that completely baffles me.
I don't particularly care about the everyday exploits of complete strangers. Or really of people I do know. I figure if they want me to know, they'll just tell me to my face and not expect me to follow their internet public diary.
However, I guess it's those people's opinions to believe that people want to keep blogs. Or that they really want to read blogs. I just find the idea a little hard to grasp. It's not a forum, it's not a community, it's just a single person posting their opinions on things and if they so choose, ignoring any of the comments they receive.
While you can do that on a forum too, at least on a forum you are actually entering into a conversation and/or argument, generally with the intention of looking at the other people's reaction to a topic.
And being forced to start something I don't want to do in the first place, and have never really wanted to do, doesn't really inspire me to just run with it. Really it just makes me forget about it. And when I remember makes me roll my eyes because I just don't want to do it.
But here I am and here I sit, writing in this anyway.
What's the philosophical value of this? Probably none. This is just rambling in general.
I suppose to put some philosophical value in this post I'll just add something that I've been thinking about on and off for about a year.
I kind of wonder if people have really gotten smarter over the years. I know at some point thousands of years ago humans really were dumber than they are today, but in the last two thousand years or so, probably longer, have humans really gotten smarter? Or have there just been those selected few who notice that 2 and 2 make 4? In a manner of speaking, anyway. Like the invention of the cotton gin, the light bulb, paper, the printing press. Are those really signs of all mankind moving forward or just a few people noticing a few things and learning little things and making little connections to make it seem like society is moving forward?
Because I'm not so sure that they are signs of humanity getting smarter. I think people are, for the most part, the same as they were 2000 years ago. We just have more gadgets now.
2 comments:
This is a good blog entry, in my view, because it introduces some basic questions about the value of blogs, and at times a medium should include some self-criticism.
Most blogs are puzzling, and sort of ego-devices, yes, I agree. I have six of them at the moment, although four of them are basically inactive. I simply don't have time to keep up even with one.
But it is curious that some folks seem to think that perfect strangers thousands of miles away might find their exploits of interest.
Here's one that I've found interesting -- the only one I find myself returning to again and again. What I like about it is the blandness, the straightforwardness of presentation of worlds and experiences which to me are quite foreign. I'm sorry that I don't know how to create a hyperlink in the comment box. http://www.janchipchase.com/
As to the role of inventions and inventors, I'm inclined to agree with cynical writers like GI Gurdjieff on these matters. Gurdjieff argued, amongst other things, that the "average" person is not "normal", not capable of advancing to the situation of gaining "higher" powers because for them the "basic" powers of humanity have not yet been reached -- and may never be reached. He comes off like an egomaniac, but I'm fairly well convinced that he was just speaking an uncomfortable truth.
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