In the perpetually swelling and inspiring nerd universe there is a demigod named Neil Gaiman. The man wields words like swords and has birthed some of the most important cultural texts (Coraline, The Sandman, Fragile Things, et al.). The meringue on this bespectacled nerd pie is that he once graced the stage of The Colbert Report. Trust me when I say this man walks hallowed ground.
Anyway, he once said something truly inspiring worth sharing on this dawn of a new decade:
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t to forget make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
I cannot muster the energy for resolutions, for a variety of reasons which are not interesting enough to share, but His Holy Gaiman definitely inspires me to muster the will to surprise myself this year. Here’s to you, here’s to the continued expansion of the nerd universe, and here’s to surprises.
Apropos everything
Watch this video first.
Okay, now we are on the same page. Not to point out the obvious to anyone, but the Media (yes, capital M implying a singular entity, which I defend with giant conglomerate media companies) – it is a cesspool of suckage. It is a buy-product of an era where people had at most two venues for information (newspaper and network television), mediated by whatever network affiliates found interesting for the day. It is dying. And it is scary because it is the thing I always thought I would be involved with, career-wise. I think this video gently pokes fun at how predictable, unimaginative, and formulaic it comes across to audiences.
Now we have Twitter, RSS feeds, and even Facebook to receive what we consider pertinent information. The question that haunts me, and shapes most of my academic interest, is what classifies information as pertinent. Is it demarcated as interesting because it pops up in a news feed of Facebook, or truncated in a 140 character tweet? It’s a complicated issue to think about, considering how diverse motivations for information gathering can be. For some, news is simply something to talk to others about (social stitching?) and for others, it is to be engaged in a global environment.
This is an open-ended dialogue. What does news look like to you? Why is it useful? What types of information are compelling to you?