To blog or not to blog…

It’s been all quiet on my blog for quite some time, so I thought I should make a post. I should blame school for this, but the fact of the matter is that I am just not so certain as to what direction to take this blog. I know I have the whole “technical progress” thing, which is fun, but doesn’t fill what I am hungry for.

I do have my family, and ultra-personal things I could publish here, which I could do for hours, but I think I rather keep some things from the public arena. I also feel like I betray privacy when I get out to blog about my family. I suppose I am feeling out what I am comfortable publishing here on that level. I also feel there is only egotism involved in blogging about myself, and believe you me, my ego is pretty big as it is.
Socio-Political? This is easy. Almost toooooo easy. Seriously, who wants another rant-blog/opinion piece collection? I have some very strong opinions and ideas there, some bordering on the anarcho-communist, and some not quite so extreme. But I want to put out GOOD ideas, not just Angry ideas, and it seems that most political blogs are either angry or bereft with tunnel-vision. That is certainly not what I want to appear as. I think I might open up some forum space for that. I know there is ONE reader interested in that sort of EXCHANGE.

And here we have it, EXCHANGE. The platform I am using for this site is based off of communal exchange, community building, not just blogging or serving up the occasional media file. Exchange. This is what Drupal is good for. And I don’t mean the blase` social networking sites like facebook or myspace. While they have their place, it seems that while they benefit from and, in a very nominal way enhance social bonds, they seem to me to be not much more than predatory spaces doing little more than exploiting existing social relationships and providing space for egocentrical expression without providing a means to, or encouraging the exchange of socially relevant content.

Let me explain that: social networking sites capitalize on pre-existing relationships and affiliations to build a user base. In essence they do nothing more than attempt to take the place of the “face” of the relationship, to become the channel in which the relationship is expressed without actually providing any new content. You see, it does nothing new and nothing more than attempt to exploit people’s ego and egotism. While this is fine for them, and I am sure has its place…somewhere… What I would like to see, and would love to be a part of is something entirely different. Some thing which does not simply take advantage of existing networks, but promotes the formation of NEW networks based on the EXCHANGE of socially relevant, substance based CONTENT.

Another way to view these two differing ideas is to look at them as recipies which create similar dishes. In one, you start with pre-existing social networks, and you add an avenue of egocentric expression, and you get an online community. The other you start by promoting substance based content, provide an avenue of relating the content to other pieces of content, and you get a totally new community. Drupal is a brilliant platform for this. Community building based off of content, and the exchange of relevant content. Substance, not ego.

I think that is why it has been so quiet around here this month. I am looking to build a substance based site, with a focus on community and the exchange of relevant content. So I have been really muling over the direction I want. Really trying to keep things from being “all about me”, and trying to brew up a good direction that still leaves the site open-ended enough to take on new avenues of thought and expression.

I want ideas to live and grow here, not just ego.

I could now go into a piece about how I think that the contrast between substance and ego is the very thing that is spurring degradation of our culture, our politics and our lives in general…but I will not. I will, perhaps, work on that as an opinion piece, and give it its own little place to live. I will leave it at that for now.

So, it seems as if the content here, is the concept of content itself. H’m. Content based content. Stop. In the end all things degrade down into nothingness. So, in the spirit of the totally confusing nature of thing/nothingness, I now have a blog/site which is content based in its intent, but has absolutely no direction for that content. In other words, it is a site for substantial ideas, not egos…but it is about nothing in particular and is totally fine with a purely egocentric expression, just so long as the egotism comes after the substance in the content, and doesn’t try to create substance in order to validate the ego into content. Well, it makes sense to me…