Subject/Object

Many of my posts have been about this tension in me, between my love of books and my love of computers and the Internet.

On the one hand, I am a child of the computer generation through and through. I was on Bulletin Board Systems when I was 12. From there I upgraded to the text based Hamilton Freenet when the Internet first became accessible to a wider public. In elementary school I always followed around that one teacher who ran the network, and in high school I seriously considered studying computers in university.

But a few good teachers at the end of high school and I feel in love with academic subjects like English and History. Slowly over OAC and five years of a degree in Philosophy I became a reader and writer.

I always loved the reading more, and I now read much more widely than I every did, from Rousseau’s Confessions to Milton Friedman’s A Monetary History of the United States. But I never really have had a subject to write about that took up as much as my interest as hacking on a computer does. In many respects I think communication on the Internet can be shallow, pointless, and a waste of my mental energy, and I would much prefer being in a book. But I admit I am an Internet addict.

I think if I could help people—particularly those in academia—help one another find what they consider good and interesting, that would make me happy.

So I think I am seriously considering moving my focus to becoming something of a web or technology librarian. But not exactly. I think I have been progressing that way. Copyright, Information Literacy, Media Ecology, for me these all point to something: what is the Internet doing to those things that have been dominated by the success of printing technology, those being scholarship and learning.

The end. Right now I am touching up my CSS and HTML skills. And I am planning to write a paper on adapting this particular open source networking site in academia. Expect some design changes here soon.