Luke 6:38

Well I made it to a year, and over a blog a day on average which is better than I expected. The ritual of the daily blog has been a good one, and at times surprising. A blog you spend days on receives no comments, a throw away remark written and posted before midnight to hit the deadline (yes I have become obsessional) gets multiple comments and references. My technorati ranking went from zero to 250 in a series of unpredictable steps, and that isn’t bad for the first year. Thanks to everyone who has linked, commented and also given me access to their own thoughts. My RSS feed is richer for the exchange.

I had intended something profound today relating to the Weinberger/Keen debate. I brought both of their books to Australia with that goal in mind, but I must admit I have been disappointed. Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous is a rolling, well written narrative, a flow of examples that establish the interconnected and messy nature of the world we live in. However there it stops, it would have been great to see some real critical reflection from one of the pioneers. Keen in The cult of the Amateur also takes an anecdotal form with a constant succession of examples selected to prove a negative thesis. His argument reminds me a bit of some of the extreme right preachers and cultists, seizing on evidence out of context, adding some polemic and conviction in the hope of winning converts. The book is littered with logical errors and a crazy theme that social computing must be wrong because it is deriving traditional channels of advertising revenue. What does he think television did to Newspapers for God’s sake, they survived and will again in a different form. There are a few points hidden within the polemic but they are not well argued. The man is a troll pure and simple. To be honest both books would be better as essays. I plan to try and distill some meaning from them over the next few days, but the material did not justify much more than the above comments.

So what have I learnt in this last year? Well many things but I think it can be summed up as follows:

Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again

As the title implies, its the thirty eighth verse of the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St Luke. Yes blogs are about publishing your views, but that act gives you far greater riches in return. To the next year …