(or do you say “Tod und Verklärung“?)
It is easily a full-time job these days to read through the journals, blogs, trades, general-circulation publications, Web sites, and opinion playgrounds in order to stay up with what is being said about the trend line of the news industry. (Er, Owen, say something that isn’t obvious. Thank you.)
These writings, musings, and analyses may be divided in general categories as follows.
- Eschatology
- Punditry
- Advice
- Nostalgia
- Prestalgia (“A wistful longing for something that hasn’t happened” – Jesse Berst, 1999)
- Vujà dé (“An eerie feeling you’ve just seen something you never want to see again” – Berst again)
- Prescription
- Dead certainty (this is not unrelated to eschatology)
I fear that a lot of what I read does not try very hard to imagine a future context for the production or consumption of news, but rather performs some straight-line extrapolations … you know, the way analysts used to construct earnings forecasts.
The questions are all pretty clearly defined; the answers would clearly be in dispute, if anyone inside the business actually had the spare time to dispute them. Since they don’t, dozens, scores, or hundreds of smart people are straining to make their voices heard above or through the rest.
Of course, one benefit that attaches to many voices in the conversation is that they are literate, thoughtful, and interesting, coming as they do from disciplined, well-read experts and professionals. One less beneficial side effect of how good everyone sounds, though, is that even the silly ideas are not easily dismissed, including mine. I hope.
Anyway, I have an idea that the ideas in the following are pretty good: (more…)
…an 89-gig initial backup of the primary Mac, via Wi-Fi to a Time Capsule across the room, is complete. Next up, the recently re-commissioned laptop. And then the tertiary G4.