Geek blogging is dead, apparently. It's now all mainstream. I hope it doesn't die completely and I'm pretty sure it wont.
Mainstream-ness brings good and bad. For instance; it's good and wholesome that today we don't get gouged (too much) for computer equipment and software. About 15 years ago, when I was in sales, a single license of Microsoft Word (MS-DOS version 5, I think) sold for about £600. Corel Draw version 2, went for about the same. In 1990, an 8MB RAM daughterboard use to go for over a grand. Compare that with today, quite different. Supply and demand in all it's unashamed capitalist glory.
So, is it the end of geek blogging or just that everyone's now a geek? The former I suppose, if a key part of being a geek is being a social minority. And we'd be wrong to assume that just because the latest big thing has gone mainstream, that we geeks need to dejectedly trudge off en masse to find the next big thing. What's with all this 'big thing' nonsense. There are many, many small and commercially insignificant things that geeks revel in. Rarely, in fact, do geeks succeed in creating social phenomena like blogging. So, don't get so depressed if you don't find it, and don't try to project big-thing-ness onto replacement candidates like podcasting - as excellent as it is, it does have its limits, or moblogging; like since when was it socially enriching to share your bad photographs of assorted beer-mats, cats in various poses (frankly, if you've seen one cat pose, you've seen them all) and blurry groups of cool (but unrecognisable) people at conferences.
Disenchanted, disenfranchised geek bloggers should not go looking for the next big thing like a horde of bespectacled, over caffeinated venture capitalists sans the venture capital, for that is not the true way of the guild of geeks.
Instead, go wire up a giga-bit network point in your bathroom.
Mainstream-ness brings good and bad. For instance; it's good and wholesome that today we don't get gouged (too much) for computer equipment and software. About 15 years ago, when I was in sales, a single license of Microsoft Word (MS-DOS version 5, I think) sold for about £600. Corel Draw version 2, went for about the same. In 1990, an 8MB RAM daughterboard use to go for over a grand. Compare that with today, quite different. Supply and demand in all it's unashamed capitalist glory.
So, is it the end of geek blogging or just that everyone's now a geek? The former I suppose, if a key part of being a geek is being a social minority. And we'd be wrong to assume that just because the latest big thing has gone mainstream, that we geeks need to dejectedly trudge off en masse to find the next big thing. What's with all this 'big thing' nonsense. There are many, many small and commercially insignificant things that geeks revel in. Rarely, in fact, do geeks succeed in creating social phenomena like blogging. So, don't get so depressed if you don't find it, and don't try to project big-thing-ness onto replacement candidates like podcasting - as excellent as it is, it does have its limits, or moblogging; like since when was it socially enriching to share your bad photographs of assorted beer-mats, cats in various poses (frankly, if you've seen one cat pose, you've seen them all) and blurry groups of cool (but unrecognisable) people at conferences.
Disenchanted, disenfranchised geek bloggers should not go looking for the next big thing like a horde of bespectacled, over caffeinated venture capitalists sans the venture capital, for that is not the true way of the guild of geeks.
Instead, go wire up a giga-bit network point in your bathroom.