A Nation of Broadcasters

11/4/07

A coworker lamented to me that "blogging" (said with a tone that made it sound like something located midway between fictional and disgusting) seems like the ultimate form of narcissim---hundreds of thousands of people announcing the irrelevencies of their life to a world of people who, for the most part, just don't care. I contemplated countering the argument, except there wasn't anything untrue about the comment. As a person with multiple web outlets for my irrelevent voice (most of which I created as platforms for those irrelevancies), I felt sheepish explaining that, but I did enjoy that moment of awkward silence before they not-quite-deftly changed to a new subject.

But the comment resonates with me---a good conversation involves people sharing ideas and moving the conversation forward. We all know how annoying it is to talk to someone who isn't so much "listening" as "waiting to talk", and I worry that blogs are simply that: So many of us are so busy broadcasting that we forget to listen, and spending so much time in front of the monitor that we forget the joys of interpersonal interaction. (No, the irony is not lost that I'm saying this in a blog.)

My daughter is five, and she doesn't blog. As near as I can tell, her life is not diminished by that absence. I'm trying to learn from that. Starting right....now...