Out on my bike instead of blogging

You may not have noticed, but I haven’t been blogging recently.

I don’t know how many of my blogs you read, or if you regularly read any of them, but if you routinely read two or more of them (and by my calculations, that would make you one of around 150 people), or if you’re an avid regular reader of just one of them (which puts you in a slightly larger crowd of around 5,000 people), then you may have picked up the fact that the words and pictures have dried up of late.

Not that I imagine you’ve been hanging on the edge of your seat for my next utterance - but there’s still a blogger’s built-in need to apologise for not meeting the expectations set up by prior regularity. In fact it’s only me that’s been let down by my silence. This blogging thing is therapeutic, you know - and I’m only hurting myself by not showing up.

But hell, it’s certainly not because I’ve had nothing to say. It’s just that I’ve had little time or inclination to say it. Here’s why.

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I did a radical de-friending exercise on Facebook last night. I went through the list of people I’m connected to and realised it was far too long, and that it made the site less than useful.

Unfortunately, I was a little over-zealous. There were some people who were kind of attached to being my friend - and one or two people that I removed in error.

If that’s you, then I apologise - and I have drafted the following letter in response to the couple of complaints that I have received:

Hi,

Apologies for that - I’ve been doing a big clearout of friends in MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and a couple of other social networks. They’ve become unmanageable simply because I’m connected to so many people.

I did the same a while back with Twitter - going down from following 500 people to following 5. I’ve crept back up again to about 25, but I’m trying to keep the information flow light.

My criteria was people I work with, people I’m related to, and people I go and have a drink with. That’s pretty much it. That drops me down to 80-odd from the 400+ I was at on Facebook.

Unfortunately, unlike Twitter, ‘friendship’ can only happen two ways on Facebook. There are lots of people who follow me on Twitter that I don’t follow. But on Facebook, you can only connect reciprocally. If I don’t follow you, you can’t follow me.

I had a feeling this purge of mine would step on a few toes, and I certainly don’t mean to offend anyone. My expectation is that over the next few weeks, I’ll end up re-adding a bunch of people (though I’ll be more selective this time around - I had people added who were complete and utter strangers to me).

But to be honest, I don’t actually use Facebook that much, except to check in and run down the list of people I know and see what they’re up to - then grumble that they’re not on Twitter, which is so much better at that sort of thing.

Then I look at their photos, and grumble that they’re not using Flickr, which is so much better at that sort of thing.

Then I look at the two groups that I’m a member of, and grumble that they’re not self-contained online communities, blogs or Ning sites - or at the very least, Yahoo or Google Groups, which are so much better at that sort of thing.

And finally, I look at my Inbox and grumble that these people haven’t sent their messages to my email, which is so much better at that sort of thing.

I go to Facebook because I have to - because that’s where people are. And every now and then on all my social networks, I’ll do a radical pruning. But just as in gardening, sometimes when you do a radical pruning, you inadvertently chop off a flower.

In this case, that was you - and I’m adding you back to rectify this error. Sorry to signal any sort of rejection. It wasn’t at all intentional or directed at you.

Delighted to have you as my Facebook friend.

If this applies to you, please by all means go back to Facebook and re-add me. It wasn’t a personal slight. It was just a spring clean. Talk to you soon.

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Number 3 is too young…

I was watching some old episodes of Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Really old episodes. Mark Lamarr was hosting.

And when they did the lineup, the question was ‘Which one of these is Paul Gray - the bass player from Eddie and the Hot Rods?’.

I know him! He works for the Musicians Union, and has played host to me in towns across the bottom and left hand side of the country when I’ve given seminars.

He was dismissed from the lineup as being far too young: “You would have been minus two when Eddie and the Hot Rods were around.” I hope he took that as a compliment.

But it was very exciting to see him on the show. Like when I bought Trivial Pursuit in New Zealand way back - and Trevor Reekie and Barry Jenkin were both answers to questions.

Reading room at the British Library

I’m writing a book. I know I’ve done this before, but this is different. This is one of those ‘the book I always meant to write’ books. It’s big and ambitious, and I don’t know how long it will take me or whether it will even ever be, in any useful way, finished.

I twittered about this on the way back from London. I said that it’s pretty much about everything in the world ever - which is sort of true. But I’ve started by getting a spot of research done, and there will be a lot more research besides. This is going to be one of those books where a lot of knowledge will have to siphoned in from all other sorts of places.

So I spent a good four or five hours in the 2nd floor Humanities Reading Room at the British Library looking at some stuff about Marshall McLuhan, just to get me started. He’s kind of the cornerstone of the thinking - or at least the springboard into the basic premise.

What’s it about, Dubber?
I’m trying to think of a simple way of explaining the central thesis of the book. In my head, it’s very clear - but I’m not quite sure I’m ready to launch into a defense of the idea just yet. I’ve mapped out some areas to cover and it’s going to be a fairly broad-ranging work. In order to do it justice, I’m going to have to bring some of the following areas into play:

Technology, Media Theory, Economics, Education, Physics, Aesthetics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, History, Sociology, Literary Criticism, Anthropology and Mathematics (Game Theory, specifically).

It’s a little daunting, and I want to do each of them justice, though I only have at best a vague grasp of the basics in each area, and each will only be playing a supporting role in the construction and support of the overall thesis - which, in a nutshell, suggests that digital technology makes us, as human beings, different.

There - that wasn’t so hard to encapsulate, was it? Stuff is digital, so we are different.

But I’m going a bit further than that. Not that we think differently or act differently (though, obviously that’s true) - but that we are different. A different category of human being.

Homo Digitalis - Digital Man
A long time ago, I had thought this was going to be my PhD Thesis, but I abandoned it because it seemed to be more of a life’s work than a big essay. This all happened when my Masters dissertation about Digital Radio spiralled out of control a little (into all of the above realms).

A basic skeleton structure for the book (notes not included)

It’s been haunting me more and more the past few weeks, and so I thought I’d see if I could actually map out a structure for such a book so that I could at least have a framework on which to hang everything.

And now I do.

I may not mention this again for a while. It’s processing and bubbling away in the background. I’ve been asked if I’m going to blog the writing process. I may actually start with an article or two and get some discussion going - but for now, I’m just going to let it brew.

Obviously this both draws from and feeds into the stuff I’ve been doing on New Music Strategies for some time, where my mantra has been ‘you have to understand the media environment…’ - but it puts it into a more universal context.

This is not about how to make money from music - though it will, naturally, cover making money and musicianship. Art and commerce. Culture and economics.

I’m really energised by this and excited to get properly started. I know it’s going to be a long haul, but I’ve had this sitting in a (conceptual) drawer for over 6 years now and it’s time to get it out, dust it off and give it some attention.

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It’s kind of weird being without a mobile phone. It’s really inconvenient being without my wallet, and while it only took about 10 minutes to cancel my cards and order new ones, I’m not looking forward to having to reapply for the drivers licence and my one-year bus pass.

Not having any way to pay for things is awkward - but it’s the loss of the phone that has thrown me out the most. Weird how you come to rely on stuff like that.

I didn’t have a mobile phone till I got to the UK, and could not, at that time, imagine ever really needing one. There are no media lecturer emergencies in life. But I pretty much run on the handset now. It’s my watch, my portable calendar, contact directory and short messaging service.

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