Direction

...posting here takes up a lot of my time, time I've been recently trying to redirect away from the keyboard. This summer I had six marvelously keyboard free weeks (except for the occasional cafe email), and I'd like to integrate more of that into the coming year. That said, I do enjoy maintaining this site, but as Stephanie properly criticized me last month, it's been widdled down to a string of links without any substantial commentary, which I guess was the only think distinguishing this site from Arts and Letters Daily, SciTech Daily, or 3 Quarks Daily, the three main sources for these articles during the past year.

I've also felt guilty that I'm simply contributing to the noise side of the signal/noise blogosphere, and I don't have the commitment to cross over, nor do I think I'd like to be that addicted to information. The internet has a lot of information. If you follow Boing Boing or Pandagon, you know what I'm talking about. Things such as this collection of amazing artwork by Banksy at the West Bank wall, or a remarkable letter to the Arizona Republic with dumbfounding commentary on the intelligent design debacle. (Anna: There is so much.) When I pulled those last two links from pandagon, I hadn't even visited it in a good four months. And those were just off of the front page, which contained only posts from the last two days.

So I'm feverishly debating whether or not I'm going to put this site to rest for a while. It's all too much, and I think i was better off without the internet. People got along fine without it for a very long time, from what I've heard. And people still get along, throughout the analog real world suspended between the digital metropoli of the world. (A thin streak of which I crossed this summer.) What I'd ideally like this site to be is a place where I can post links to interesting articles, and I can then discuss them with people I know in the response section. I want it to work like a mass-emailed article with a consolidated debate forum for all the people I've come to know through the years, (guests are naturally welcome).

The other things that this site is good for is that it (1) serves a journal of my thoughts on various topics, when I do get the chance to scribble together some commentary, and it (2) keeps me writing in english with some frequency (though the construction that introduces this paragraph is admittedly pretty damn horrendous). It also (3) gives me incentive to crawl the internet in search for all things interesting regarding alternative energy, energy policy, archeological sciences, assistive technology, neuroprosthetics, educational policy and philosophy, EU/International relations, ethical development, sustainable conservation, responsible technology, and such things that truly interest me. I'm undoubtedly going to go into work in one of those fields, so it could only be a good thing that I stay on top of developments, no?

I guess the only question is if there's a defendable point to maintaining this site, and that hinges upon wether or not my audience (or lack there of, though that's understandable, I've been slow in posting) will give me some feedback, some debate, some bite. And in return I'll try and be more substantial.

Consider this a call for vote of confidence. Can this site be more than just internet noise, and perhaps serve as a community of informative keeping-ups? Maybe I should get some more people to post? Though I shamelessly doubt that there are people I know who crawl the internet as much as I do, and I wouldn't want to infect anyone with my unhealthy bug. Crack is wack.