OT: Sci-fi (was RE: Ultra-portable terminals)

[Fairlight]

On Wed, Aug 02, 2006 at 12:32:54PM -0400, Jay Ashworth may or may not have
proven themselves an utter git by pronouncing:
> > virtual pulpit or a public diary.  I've considered doing the whole weblog
> > thing and in the end my analysis still comes down to, "And -who- exactly is
> > going to give a damn enough to read it that I should waste my time
> > maintaining one instead of gaming?"
> 
> Well, finding that out is sort of the point, isn't it?  :-)

No?  :)

I mean...seriously, no.  

If I write, or speak, or whatever, it falls into two modes:

1) Social conversation, which may be trivial to the point of banal, or may
contain very interesting content, depending on where it's taken the
participants and also our moods.

2) Conveying information, be it technical, philosophical, or whatever.  The
point is that I already know the information presented, and I wouldn't be
conveying it if I didn't believe it to be at least mostly on the mark.  I
don't need a rehash of my own material (not even liking to hear myself
speak via a recording device, especially), and since it's a one-way medium
there's no feedback process involved in which it becomes a debate.  If you
put something out there, it's to "influence" others, not to be influenced.

Since I've never really given much of a damn what people think of me unless
I come to respect them, I really don't see the point in finding out who's
been reading my articles, who would listen to a podcast, or who would read
a weblog.  I'm not into the whole vanity thing of analysing webserver logs
to see what my traffic is; I'd rather spend my time productively, playing
the game du jeur, which pretty much sums up what I think of log watchers
that are in it for anything other than debugging or metrics gathering
to make sure their uplink/server are adequate or to gather stats for
prospective advertisers.

So without knowing if there's even an audience, it becomes a rather
expensive "on spec" waste of time.  I'd rather write software in that
time--at least it might sell.  I can't see wasting the time to see if there
-is- an audience when there's zero payoff.

The question for me isn't, "Who's listening, and why?"  I couldn't care
less.  The question is, "Will it have a net impact on whatever I'm
discussing?"  If the answer is doubtful to no, then it's not worth doing.
Again, I don't see the point in vanity taken to that extreme.

> Language has many purposes.

Nowadays, I wonder if maybe it's not time for a sequel book for
communications undergrads titled "Discussing Ourselves to Death".  No,
wait.  That would imply a degree of critical-thought-derived education
actually being present in our educational system.  I wonder if they even
still use the "Amusing" text...

> It is neither of those.  Many minority communities adopt the terms
> which others use about them derogatorily as internal nicknames,
> reclaiming them at least for their own use.  Not too many jews call one
> another 'kike', at least non-ironically, but it's not too uncommon, I
> gather, to hear "wop" used in this fashion.
> 
> Again, only within the community.

And again, it's a bloody double-standard.  If it's derrogatory or not, the
criterion should sprawl across the entire board.  These would be (some of
the) very communities that decry discrimination the loudest, no less.  But
it's okay for them to treat themselves specially and get away with it.
Sure, I see the "logic" in that.  NOT.

> It's an interesting discipline, sociological linguistics.

You sure that's not sociopathical?  So many things seem to be.

mark->