Posts tagged Internet
“ Ignore the pessimists who say journalism is dead. It’s never been more alive. Journalists are storytellers. Throughout history, people who have wanted to tell stories only had one option: work for someone else. He gets the profit; you get a paycheck. Now, for the first time in history — thanks to the internet — we can take the reins. We’re not forced to climb the corporate ladder. We can build rungs underneath.
”

Stop Crying That There Are No Jobs. Create One. | Afford Anything

I love this sentiment. And this is one of my favorite blog discoveries this year. Go read it.

why today is better

The other day, I stumbled upon a website that initially induced feelings of aesthetic nausea, but after a few clicks, brought back what can only be described as a warm, if uneasy, nostalgia. It was a website chronicling old HTML sites from the early days of web 1.0, when oversized T-shirts were the rage, along with oversized <marquee> tags. A virtual graveyard of Geocities and AOL addresses.

And I remembered my own foray into programming. Like all of my friends, when I was 14 I had built my own HTML website, full of animated GIFs, scrolling text, and JPGs of Fox Mulder (future husband) and UFOs. And it had a guestbook, which had a wealth of inside jokes made by silly high school freshmen.

As far as I know, that site is gone, or at least gone from my eyes. I don’t have the original address, and I don’t even remember for sure whether it was on Geocities or another service. I tried some unsuccessful googling of former AIM screennames and my original Hotmail account, but it seems that my Internet infancy, like baby pictures lost in a fire, is gone forever.

But imagine if I were 14 today. As soon as I made my website, which, while lacking the obvious appeal of flashing GIFs and unstoppable MIDI theme songs, would undoubtedly be much more stylish, I would post it on Facebook, link to it from Twitter, and Gmail it to all of my friends. Then, years and years into the future, assuming I was spared in the robot apocalypse, I would just have to search my Gmail account for that original link and a part of my childhood would return.

So what I really, really don’t understand is the people who bemoan our times. Yes, everything is recorded. Yes, there might be a disturbing lack of privacy. But the Internet as a whole is a living record of each individual life, and the greatest storehouse of memories man has ever invented.

Each blog is a diary that your mom didn’t accidentally throw away. Each email from a lover is a letter that didn’t get lost in the move. And each personal website that’s created is a snapshot of the individual behind it during the span of its existence.

I realize that during every revolution, a majority of those living through it end up yearning for the “good old days”, even when those days aren’t that old and in hindsight turn out to not have been that good in the first place. But those who are in their 20s now or younger, those with at least the smallest ounce of tech savviness, should realize that we’re living in amazing times, and instead of hindering the revolution - or worse, whining about it - we should take full advantage, and leave our marks for generations to come.

I read John Hersey&#8217;s Hiroshima cover to cover tonight. It perfectly exemplifies what good journalism should be: a total immersion in the subject, full of detail, and presenting facts as necessary ingrediants of the main story, not sprinkled on top as a forced seasoning like so many writers mistakingly do. This century needs this kind of writing just as much as the previous one did; but Hersey wrote about Hiroshima by going to Hiroshima, not by reading about it on Wikipedia. Without the funds to travel, to spend weeks or months absorbed in a single topic, rather than quickly churning out story after story in an increasingly hopeless attempt to raise advertising revenue, journalists will adjust to these ever-lower standards, and quality will be the first victim. And maybe the next time a bomb is dropped, the world may twitter about it, but will anyone actually take the time to examine just how and why it happened?

I read John Hersey’s Hiroshima cover to cover tonight. It perfectly exemplifies what good journalism should be: a total immersion in the subject, full of detail, and presenting facts as necessary ingrediants of the main story, not sprinkled on top as a forced seasoning like so many writers mistakingly do.

This century needs this kind of writing just as much as the previous one did; but Hersey wrote about Hiroshima by going to Hiroshima, not by reading about it on Wikipedia. Without the funds to travel, to spend weeks or months absorbed in a single topic, rather than quickly churning out story after story in an increasingly hopeless attempt to raise advertising revenue, journalists will adjust to these ever-lower standards, and quality will be the first victim.

And maybe the next time a bomb is dropped, the world may twitter about it, but will anyone actually take the time to examine just how and why it happened?

the anti-Twitter

I would love to see a blogging service with a minimum word count and posting limit. For example, you cannot post less than 1,800 characters, and you cannot post more than once a week.

Any tech-savvy volunteers?