The latest posting of my Internet acquaintance Adam Tinworth (we first linked because he is professionally interested in new architecture and I am an amateur fan of it) consists of just two paragraphs, and yet is full of insight into the way we live now. Either paragraph would have served well as a Samizdata quote of the day.
I could not decide which to pick, and in any case did not want to neglect the other, so here are both:
WiFi in airport departure lines is the mark of civilised countries. Free WiFi is the mark of truly civilised countries. Based on my experiences in Edinburgh and Washington, the UK is civilised and the USA is truly civilised.
In other news, I was reminded again today of the fact that pretty much the first thing people do when going for a meeting with someone new is Google them. If you Google me, you get this site. More and more people I’m meeting through magazine work have read this site before I meet them. I’d better be on my best behaviour, hadn’t I?
There is indeed, I think, something very Jane Austenish about blogging. Simply from the point of view of good manners it seems to bring the best out of a lot of people, and to moderate their snarkier tendencies, in just the kind of way that Tinworth has registered.
It is understandable that the Mainstream Media have focussed, when discussing blogging, on the impact of blogging on the Mainstream Media. Is blogging another way, and a better way, and a more cost effective way, and a less politically choosy way, to do what they already pride themselves on doing, namely to rake muck and to make powerful people wish that the ground would open up and swallow them?
This is a very good question, but it misses the degree to which blogging may also serve to make regular people just plain nicer and more polite to one another.
What on earth does WiFi mean? I hate these precious little codes.
The habit of googling new people has been written about quite extensively. (I think I first read a piece in The Times about two years ago by either Melanie Donaghue or Caitlin Thomas.) It’s a logical follow-on of the craze, just before google became a verb, of sending out the CVs of fellow dinner guests along with invitations to dinner parties.
I like Adam Tinworth’s name, though.
WiFi stands for…umm…well, I’m not sure, really. Wireless Fidelity, perhaps? It’s a shorthand way of saying “that clever wireless networking thing computers can use to access the internet which I don’t really understand but which works really well”.
Glad you like the name. It derives from the Old English for “tin worker”.
Correct,
Short for Wireless Fidelity and is meant to be used generically when referring of any type of 802.11 network, whether 802.11b, 802.11a, dual-band, etc. The term is promulgated by the Wi-Fi Alliance.
Simply from the point of view of good manners it seems to bring the best out of a lot of people, and to moderate their snarkier tendencies, in just the kind of way that Tinworth has registered.
Obviously you’ve never heard of a flame war. 🙂
Blogs serve an even more important function than simply assuring a more civil public intercourse — though that is certainly welcome.
For one thing, it introduces an element of community that didn’t exist before. As a form of voluntary association, it is free of the usual politically correct cant that infects so many actual (as opposed to virtual) organizations.
For another, it aggregates opinion. The last US election is a case in point. Many of the ususal gambits in electioneering, especially with the new finance laws in place, didn’t work. Were it not for the blogs, much of Bush’s message would’ve been lost. And John Kerry’s strangeness would’ve been minimized.
While generally sneered at and condescended to, the bloggers are having an effect and the MSM knows it. Easy to be civil when you feel confident.
“I was reminded again today of the fact that pretty much the first thing people do when going for a meeting with someone new is Google them.”
Oy, I’m fucked.