My own name on a screen, five feet long and luminous
04:46 on Saturday, February 04, 2006 • 3 responses
One recent morning in Bangalore, in the hazy consciousness unique to prolonged jetlag, I found myself browsing the folder in which I keep yet-unposted articles to etherfarm. There are 43 such articles festering in that folder, some as skeletal fragments of prose arranged into outlines, others as full-blown entries complete with photos and/or diagrams.
It’s fair to say that my participation in (and to some extent, passion for) all-things-blog went on hiatus in 2005. The list of blogs I visited on a weekly basis dwindled to three, and after launching the most recent version of this site, entries destined for public consumption went instead to a folder named “Posts” or directly to the Trash. I tend to sculpt entries over a period of time rather than fire off fleeting, inconsequential whims, and I suppose a byproduct of that methodology is, among other things, a folder of 43 entries which have never seen the light of day.
A majority of these entries focus on topics related to design and the culture of technology, but in the last year I’ve developed an irrational antipathy towards the field of web design, at least as articulated on so-called “design blogs”. Much of my retreat to woodworking (the last entry I made to this site was only partial hyperbole) centers on a desire to channel at least some of my creative energies in a medium and skillset which doesn’t change every 48 hours and which requires practice to attain competence.
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t find the web impotent or the excellent work done by web design colleagues uninspiring or lacking profound brilliance. I merely find the web’s obsession with immediacy somewhat monotonous. Perhaps this phenomenon is not particular to the web, but intrinsic to all technologically-mediated endeavors such as digital photography and electronic music.
I’ve championed the ostensibly democratic power structure of the web for years, but who knew I’d find the vox populi so deafening?
I find some vindication in the fact that the discontent I express with all-things-web is not unique to myself; others such as Mark, Khoi, Derek and Heather and Rachel, who have all significantly influenced the ways and means in which the masses publish electronically, have looked for ways to bridge the ephemerality of the web with the relative humanity of print. Similarly, more than a few friends of mine have put down their text editors and FTP clients permanently in favor of the deeper, calmer waters of material design. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a trend, per se, but it’s somewhat comforting to find my thoughts echoed in the actions of people much smarter and more resourceful than myself.
In any case, as I fire off this missive, I find myself on the last leg of a four-week, three-country, three-climate business trip, greasing the wheels of globalization. My wife observed that last year was the first in a long while that I didn’t go abroad at all, and while it certainly feels good to give the ol’ passport a workout, traveling for business, however fun and productive, is most certainly not traveling recreationally, and I’m now running on fumes. With the kid due any time in the next 2-6 weeks (look’s like he’s running on the early side), it’ll be some time before I pack up The Big Suitcase again. Simultaneously finding that folder of unpublished work and accepting an invitation to judge a web design contest has reinvigorated my desire to dust the cobwebs off this site, so I intend to spend the sleepless nights in my near future rummaging through the aforementioned folder and in a text editor, crafting even more entries for you to groan about.