etherf@rm has changed my life.
10:21 on Wednesday, March 20, 2002 • 1 response
OK, that’s an overstatement. The kind of overstatement you’d hear in a weight loss infomercial. The kind of weight loss infomercials which involve diet plans or “nutritional supplements” that exist in complete denial of the fundamental principles of the physical universe. The kind of fundamental principles which dictate that lowfat is antithetical to “tastes good.”
So etherf@rm hasn’t changed my life. I’m still a somewhat nihilistic graduate student with too many deadlines-gone-by, for example. I haven’t gotten any taller and I don’t run any faster or eat any more since I started work on etherf@rm last December. Well, OK, maybe I eat a little more, but you know, all that aerobic typing and reading really works the metabolism.
It’s more that etherf@rm has changed my outlook on life—in both good and bad ways. I’ve never really thought of etherf@rm as a “personal website,” though I understand that to most people, that’s what it is. I’ve thought of etherf@rm as an experiment, you know, that whole digital narcissism thing. I spend a lot of time in my head, so to speak, and etherf@rm is my attempt and externalizing some of that head-time so that I could see it in front of me rather than swimming around in it.
It’s kind of like this—imagine being able to see your sight. etherf@rm has, unexpectedly, helped me see how I see. I notice how I notice. I can’t really say I’m more in tune with the world-before-me, and it’s not as if I experience my life in terms of potential website content (ack—now that’s a scary thought). Having etherf@rm in the back of my head when I’m driving or walking around, though, attenuates the tendency to “just walk by” or “tune things out,” and amplifies the desire to stop and take pictures, to eavesdrop, to be able to articulate an experience or sensation, regardless of whether any of it will make it onto the f@rm. this site has kind of become a newly-attached prosthetic sense, one which I feel compelled to try out, to exercise, to use in every possible way and in every possible direction.
The downside, though, is that the world outside has become a much bigger place. All those places to see, all those foods to taste, all those stories to hear…they taunt me.
Comments closed