Right. So. Here’s the thing. I work in ‘internet stuff’, software, digital media, etc.. Actually doing that for a day job does two things for you – it keeps you looking for The Next Big Thing for the purposes of exploiting it, and makes you feel anxious about your own obsolescence. The only way you’re going to keep up is to give things a go and find out what, if anything, you’re missing.
Take blogging. Please, somebody, take blogging. There’s an argument that says that the only people actually sitting down and reading blogs are the people who also happen to write them. A little community of mutual back-patting and reassurance. There’s a counter argument that looks at the number of blogs that show up in the top 10 search results and concludes that bloggers, with their series of niche contributions to human knowledge are actually making us better informed as a race. I no longer have to look for the website of some guy who spends his life installing Linux for help on installing Linux. I just find a blog post of somebody who happens once to have done that and maintains a blog.
So here am I. Looking for the next big thing, avoiding my own obsolescence and, where possible, contributing to human knowledge by reporting my niche experiences. I’m pretty sure there’ll be an initial flurry of posts and it’ll die, but you can’t say I didn’t try. Well, I mean, you could. You’d be wrong. It’d me more accurate to say I should have tried harder…