Bandwidth Enough And Time

I have great hopes for the future of the blogosphere.

Yes, I said it, I admit it, and you can go ahead and drape me in the Geek for it. To be sure, I appreciate and love the way the written word was handled in the past - rare and fragile books made up of parchment pages filled with ornate calligraphied script, the fragility and mustiness of hand made paper that was never intended to last decades, much less centuries, and the varieties of the pure leather bindings, often worn smooth by centuries of caressing hands. The artifacts themselves are wonderful and beautiful, and while they'll only be seen by a few the works themselves have been disseminated quite well through society to form a cadre of classical works. The words of these long dead authors continue to resonate in a way that is satisfying and constant.

Yet in the spareness of the binary world, I find delight within the speed and elegance of the electronically communicated word - a breathtaking purity transmitted in a 0,1 code. We've almost started to take for granted the incredible speed in which we can send our words to others - (we've all been in the position of being on the phone with a person who's supposed to send you an important document by email and you just can't wait for the nanosecond it takes to get to you...."It's not here yet...not here yet...okay, refresh send & receive...I just did...you should get it any second...well I haven't gotten it yet...well you should get it did you refresh...yes I just refreshed...thank god I got it".)

We can sometimes hardly bear to wait 5 minutes to get what we need.

I think about the blogosphere - something I don't write much about, but on occasion ponder its enormity, its capacity and its community - and I think that we as "net" citizens now have enormous opportunities to encounter original writers and thinkers in ways that 5 years ago, 1 year ago, or even 6 months ago would be unimaginable.

Any topic under the sun that amuses or engages an individual - any cause, great or small that energizes the passion of a writer has its adherents in blogs - whole communities that link to each other, trade news, or meet up in realtime.

The big issues such as politics and religion have quite a bit larger communities than, for example, those communities devoted to curling or Siamese cats. But the community exists, and that's where the point lies. There are blogs about food, travel, linguistics, philosophy, atheism, baseball, knitting, and every other subject under the sun.

And each individual writer carves out their own niche, bonds with their own community, posts at a workplace or at home or both, writes in the morning with a cup of coffee, over a sandwich at noon, in the evening with a glass of wine, in the middle of the night either plain insomniac or while rocking a baby with one foot.

Some writers simply can't produce without their favorite music blasting in the background, some need absolute silence save birdsong to collect their thoughts. (I generally fail miserably without my award-winning combination of early evening, cigarettes, beer or wine, and French talk shows in the background.) Some writers sweat and slave over their work and edit furiously over the course of days - others smack out truly interesting posts in a matter of a few short hours. Some perform grammar and spell checks compulsively to make sure everything is right - others have a more spontaneous relationship with their prose.

Some bloggers write posts that at first glance don't seem too interesting, yet they have an amusing and large readership who write lightning flash comments more scintillating than the posts themselves - I read some bloggers not necessarily for what they say but the lively commentary their work generates.

But the fact remains: among those people with internet access and a burning wish to be heard, we're becoming a writerly people, and I couldn't be more delighted. The distinctly illogical and ungrammatical will eventually fall by the wayside or progress with their own output - in any case it will pave the way for budding writers of every walk of life to learn to write well and with passion, regardless of the topic.

I believe there should be bandwidth enough for every person with something to say.