DISQUS

I also recommend Ehrenc. He's intelligent, kind hearted, interesting and political. He's not a status seeker. He's genuinely special.

When I'm not on the internet doing web2.0 stuff ...

I am a distance runner. The feeling I get from running is unequaled by anything else. It makes me feel truly alive. I don't run for competitive reasons but for that feeling.

Otherwise, I spend as much time as I can outdoors. We are lucky to live in the most heavily forested part of Toronto. We have the largest park in the city just down the street (complete with a pond and a small zoo) and only a couple of KM from the longest river in Ontario and Lake Ontario itself.

Among the animals I see on a regular basis: Swans, ducks, Canada Goose, Great Blue Herons, beavers (in High Park pond). I even saw a tiny red fox first thing in the morning.

At night, my man and I like to sit on the back deck. All is great until the family of Raccoons comes ambling over the garage roof to poke about our recycling.

In a month or so we'll head up north to Alonguin Park to camp. I love camping. I wait all year to go.

Otherwise, I like cooking and reading. Right now I'm reading MT Anderson's Feed and revisiting Gibson's Pattern Recognition (although I keep losing interest).

That's it. I like to keep my non-working life as simple as possible (that is, until we have kids).

Being called a blogger in these times is a little like being called an "emailer."

Just take the word "blogger" and change it to emailer and people might just GET what we're talking about.

Blogging is ten years old. That's a long time to talk about something as being novel and emergent. Now it's just another content delivery form. That's it.

Here's what's getting hardwired into our youth: sociopathology and narcissism.

"rate me" "compare me" "top friend" WTF?! weirdo outcasts - at least all those I called my friends back in high school - would never willingly create an app that produced this kind of social behaviour (social behaviour that is, to a for-real outsider, entirely undesirable). This stuff is entirely anti social in the look-it-up-in-the-DSMV anti social sense.

Which is why I'd argue it's VERY key to make a distinction between the true innovators and early adopters and the late majority users (who were just a glint in the bong water back when our boomer web creators were dreaming up these ideas).

The people who started the social revolution (a long, long time ago) had something very different in mind. Nothing short of collective self actualisation. But enlightenment and self actualisation are antithetical to a consumer market that depends on the constant production of insecurity, competitive behaviour and meanspiritedness. Which one makes money?

That's the why all the new social apps are productive of insecurity and social illness. Because it's profitable.

Hi Torley!!!

Long time no internets with you. I went offline for a while (to go back to school) and then came back. I haven't blogged at typepad in years. I'm now blogging at:
http://melaniemcbrid.net (though it's mostly about education and stuff like that)

I'm also in twitter /melmcbride

And in SL - I only joined because of the number of educators in there. I have one friend there. I hope you will also be my friend.

Would love to hear from you.

Sounds like you're a whole different guy than the one I stumbled on so many years ago living with mom and dad - and you weren't even in Second Life yet. I was in Kelowna then.

Mel