Thursday, April 8, 2010

Where Have I Been?


Many of you have contacted me in one way or another and asked, "why aren't you posting stuff anymore?" First of all, thanks for noticing I haven't been as prolific as I had been. Second, how dare you put that kind of pressure on me?

Since I read a ton of articles everyday (and then talk about them in no particular order), I noticed that there have been a spurt of articles announcing the death of blogging. Blogging is "passe," one article said. "People are not blogging as much as they used to a couple of years ago," read another. So I started investigating for myself, and yes, it's true. People are not writing as much. The casual internet user is still using and browsing a lot of content, but they are not digging in and really reading more than two paragraphs of a blog, review, article, etc. Call it the Twitter Effect.

Twitter is the Haiku of social media. If you can't distill your thoughts or what you're doing (and most are freaking boring, I must concede. In fact, I have stopped following major celebs and journalists because they are so inane.) in 140 characters, it's too long and involved to bother with. I love the brevity in theory. But it's sad how much people don't want to delve in-depth into anything anymore. This is really not the time in our history to be intellectually superficial or having the attention span of goldfish.

But as much as I have loved "tweeting" and sharing things with shorter URLs, I have missed writing, pondering, and opining about things as mundane as why I love watching the documentaries on CNBC about business, to how wonderful the Phoenix Symphony is, or what the Health Care bill can and will do to this country.

So, I am left to ask this rhetorically philosophical question: If I write something in the middle of the forest and put it on blogspot, does it make a sound?

Ponder on this and let me know if blogging is the future of the Net or the technological equivalent of the pet rock.