I'm writing my abstract Dr. Sage, honest...

I was going to continue on chronicling my single-minded quest to trick out my Mac as much as I could without going overboard with the Dremel. However, I realize that 99.999% of the people who take the time to read what I'm writing don't know half of what I'm talking about, let alone understand why I'd go to so much trouble instead of leaving well-enough alone. I'll give it a break for a while and deal with some other things I've wanted to write about.

Also, I've got a million and one things rattling around in my head. An urgent reply to a message I got from a treasured friend who I've been sadly neglecting. A possible misunderstanding with another. The Hawaiian Paper for Dr. Brooks. The Blackfly Paper for Dr. Currie. And an abstract I need to write for a course that I want to email to my TA tomorrow morning. I wake up in the morning with expectations of what I'm going to do and what I'm going to accomplish. And a lot of times I fall woefully short. So is the error I'm making one of insufficient effort? Or just overly-ambitious goals?


There's a point to all of this rambling, really

I saw something in today's Metro which ended up making headlines at Slashdot. Apparently, Wal-Mart's recruited bloggers to help whitewash its corporate image. Which is of course, what's happened often in the print and online media for ages now, with companies, nations, and many other institutions, both public and private. So why the outrage?

I think it's because we've come to expect the blogosphere as the Great Equalizer, in a way. Before, it was The Internet as a whole that was considered to be the Great Equalizer, but that was really before it became less of a democratic forum and more of the great untamed virtual wilderness that the military-industrial complex could exploit. I mean, we've all seen with our very own eyes how commercialized the online experience has become. And we've all heard alarmist reports of "cyber-terrorism", alongside reports of how the US military wants to do to the internet what it's been trying to do to space since Reagan's "Star Wars" of the 1980's: "weaponize" it. (Is that even a word?)

Blogging may be the last great expression of free speech which is true to the phrase's very nature. You all heard the pundits talking about what effect the Blogosphere could have on the election, both in Canada and in the US. Your virtual soapbox has a virtually unlimited audience. This is communication at its very finest.


Great Expectations

Which brings me to my original point. We've built up our expectations of "the blog" and "the blogger" as this last frontier for freedom of speech and freedom of oppression. When in fact, the "blog" is just some amorphous entity that doesn't really have any meaning or purpose aside from the intent that the writer has when he or she writes in it. I mean, people recently have been raving about blogs like its some new phenomenon. But sites like Digital Expressions, Diary-X and LiveJournal have been around for years and years now, before anyone ever even thought of the trendy word "blog". And what were a lot of these people blogging about? Not politics, or computers, that's for sure. Just a lot of mundane, semi-interesting things about themselves, their friends, and their daily lives. And that's not really a bad thing or a good thing, it's just the way it is. Nothing profound in it at all. If the "origin" (if you could call it that) of the "blog" were teens and twenty-somethings just writing about the stuff in their lives, then I don't think you could expect some massive socio-political revolution to come out of it. A lot of fighting and verbal internet-drama, sure, but not some profound intent to expose the evils done in the shadows of the corridors of power.

Oh well. I think I've said enough for tonight. Speaking of expectations, I have a few to live up to, a few I should have made good on a long time ago. It's about time I changed that, starting now.