3 ms·
As a counterpoint, a blog post is sometimes (often times?) more about the writing than the receiving of responses. Is throwing a bottle with a message in it in
by turtledragonfly 3y ago
As a counterpoint, a blog post is sometimes (often times?) more about the writing than the receiving of responses.
Is throwing a bottle with a message in it into the ocean a "complex search query to find people?" I wouldn't phrase it that way.
The article does say:
It will seem like I am mainly talking about how to use writing
to forge meaningful relationships ... But lurking behind it is
a larger idea. Namely, that you can shape yourself by reshaping
your relationships. By changing who you are addressing, and the
responses you garner, you steer your development.
and I don't disagree with that, but at the same time, just forming the words helps you shape yourself, regardless of whether it involves other people. Or maybe the other people can just be in your own head.
I've got countless drawings and writings that nobody else will ever see, and likely will die with me. But they were very important for my self-shaping.
Maybe this is just a personality difference between me and the author — some people define themselves more in terms of their relationships with others than otherwise.
But regardless, I liked the article (:
There is some fine line between just being yourself and "singing into the void" as it were, versus trying to use your voice to make changes in the world.
I must admit I lean towards the former, but the idea of "the summoning of a new culture" at the end of the article is interesting.
- larodi 3y agoI support your view, and also lets be honest - author is very good at writing beautiful queries/blogs, but not so good as making a solid statement, because... well his statement is flawed on many levels, and the examples he gives are not analogous, and do not constitute a proof to his thesis. Besides his expose jumps from his main thesis to arguing how easy it is to become viral on some social network, particularly if you know whom to tag. Well my posts can become very popular on hacker news by replying to the right peple - that's fine. Or by annoying everyone in the comments section by being obnoxious (or not too careful with wording). But this does not imply at all that I was actively pursuing a goal, or aiming for it. It may be a result of personality trait. Some people talk, others write, and the rest - does not. The fact that the essay at http://worrydream.com/refs/Licklider-IntergalacticNetwork.pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/Licklider-IntergalacticNetwork.pd... is beautifully written and Licklider was apparently impactful on the initiation of Internet does not imply neither whether the essay predates actions Licklider undertook, nor that he was aiming for such an impact. In fact many may argue that what we have as the Internet today, 10, 20, 30 years ago is not a result of single vision. I don't think there's universal agreement on Jacquard being THE father of programming, because he's the first person in modern history who employed some sort of programs. We can with ease argue that the idea of intergalactic-anything goes back to Jules Verne for example. We can easily say that Dune kicked the LSD culture with this spice thing, and that the idea of inter-worlds communication is taken from Azimov's Foundation. Why not say that William Gibson queried for someone to write him a cyberpunk 3D, and some filthy rich guy read it and decided to act upon it... This is such an oversimplification of the role of written text, and even though I kind of agree with the author that like-minded people may write in similar fashion, I have seen more proof that like-minded people, who talk alike, actually do not get so well together.