I took this picture last August after walking along the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It was a long walk, packed with people. It was something I had always wanted to do, and though I went there by myself, I wasn't alone. The bridge was crowded- there were tons of people walking, biking, and of course, driving. It took me longer than I thought it would from looking at pictures (about an hour walking the length there and back).
I've had this blog handle for years, following the untimely demise of my (and everyone else's) Journalspace blog back when the website was wiped out. I'm not sure why I chose that name at the time, but today it seems like a very good choice, considering what I want to do with this space now. I want to take a long walk on a foggy bridge of sorts- even if I have to build it myself. I find myself trying to understand what's happening- why bookstores and newspapers are disappearing, and why universities may very well be next. It's important because so many of us, particularly those of us with humanities degrees and just enough tech knowledge to be enthusiastic about our iphones, need to understand how this is all going to shake out before we find ourselves always training for new jobs that may or may not disappear once the next big thing comes out.
I've been doing a lot of reading about this new digital age from odd angles- the big, nebulous debates on copyright, intellectual properties, pricing of files in an age where people can and do very easily copy and share what they have, perhaps not knowing or caring about the bigger questions.
What's fascinating to me is how wildly opinions differ- how extremely intelligent people can disagree so vehemently about ethics when the difference comes from the very nature of the technology in question. Generally decent people are coming to vastly different conclusions about what constitutes theft. We can have as many opinions as we want, but when an entire generation and everyone following them expects information to be free, it feels like a great tidal wave is coming, like it or not.
Steve Jobs spoke of "the intersection of technology and the humanities", and the technologies of his company and others like it have made that intersection a bustling place, fog or not.
Entire industries are collapsing and rebuilding digitally alarmingly fast. I used to be a manager and bookseller in a town with one of the highest percentage of bookstores per capita. Two of the bookstores I worked in have disappeared, and one of them was Borders. Among other mistakes, they didn't figure out this intersection of technology and the humanities, and they got swept away.
There are tons of tech blogs out there- I'm not aspiring to that. I'm not going to get very technical, but I am going to look at technology from the humanities side of the intersection. This blog may very well just be for myself, but I want a place to keep track of my thoughts along the way. You're welcome to come along, if you like.
