Punctuated Patterns
Over the months, I've been wondering peripherally about this thing called blogging, and the other day I finally worked it out.
It seems to me that a blog is a place where you can establish new patterns of thought flow. Not like face-to-face speech, not like IM, not like email. A place to put stuff that doesn't really fit anywhere else. Hmmm... interesting.
Having been badgered nearly to death by The Indefatigable Kunicki (and that surely is his full and proper name, rather like The Amazing Marvo or The Divine Miss M) at the VSTO SDR, I decided it would be A Good Thing. Well, the IK has kindly set me up with the tools, and I'm starting this particular thought flow right here right now.
I'm also, by the way, trying very very hard to not use the 's' word , or indeed the 'PSB' word.
In my mind's eye I see it rather like punctuated evolution - the hypothesis that most morphological evolution occurs during relatively brief episodes of rapid change that punctuate much longer periods of stasis.
Here's how this works: you lay down a thought on one particular day. Then, nothing happens for a while (which might be minutes or days). Then, you lay down another thought. The thing that's interesting about this is, is there a connection between the first thought and the second, given the elapsed time between? If so, what's the nature of the connection? Over a period of time, with multiple such thoughts, does any significant pattern emerge, or is it all random?
Add into the mix other people's thoughts as they comment on your post, and do we get a living tapestry of interwoven loose thought patterns? or just noise?
To answer my own question, I'd say the whole exercise (a) is meaningless and (b) would expire in short order, unless there are patterns. In which case, tracking the patterns over time might reveal some interesting things. Such as, is there an unconscious consensus on the direction that software is taking? Do we predict changes in the industry by small changes in the way we phrase our posts? Is the seemingly random in fact inherently linear?
A quiet start, then, to my blog - the perfect home for oblique comments...?