Sometimes I am embarrassed to refer to my blog. Many times it seems an act of hubris to suggest that one's insights and perspective are grand enough to warrant public interest. My judgment is that blogging is rapidly becoming a cheap cliche'.In my search for truth, I began to investigate other VC blogs. I wanted to know what they [others like me] wrote about...and how. I was doing this to calibrate my self-opinion. I found sites that I liked and those I didn't. For those I liked, I sent the authors emails describing what I liked and why - I wanted to acknowledge the human being. I sent about seven such emails.
Interestingly...I heard back from only one blog author among the seven sites I visited - ONLY ONE. It made me start to wonder...why are people doing this...why I am doing this? It is a fair assumption (I think) that authors are doing this for public consumption and that somewhere in there...is a need on their part for feedback and acknowledgment - as opposed to divine world betterment. The Internet is, in fact, the most public medium ever created and therefore public consumption is implicit. I think VCs are particularly vulnerable to the need for acknowledgment as their entire world is about testing the theory, testing the theory, testing the theory. In addition, they have to wait years to see if their investment theories translate into investment successes.
If a peer's perspective judgmentally and expressly is supportive of the authoring VC's theories...it seems that some type of further human exchange would develop between the proud father of a new theory and his admirers. Get two passionate hobbyists in a room talking about their common interests and you can't shut them up.....but not here...why?
We live in a world of diminished individualism. Among the insecure human race this trend is harmful...individualism is a mechanism for acknowledgment which shouldn't be stifled. Publishing via the web should be a tonic through which in the individual raises his head above the noise and declares "I exist and look how smart I am." The problem is that the blog medium is losing its unique capabilities do to overcrowding. The noise level has been simply raised by this fast moving medium. Perhaps this is why the response rate to my emails was low. Perhaps the authors have figured this out. The once promising "blog" no longer offers the hope of recognizing individual achievement. If this is true...man can no longer find meaning through his blog........and if this is true.... then...... blogging just died.
2 comments:
Deep blog.
Not surprised you received so few replies to the inquiries to the bloggers.
A VC once told me - "You don't have to worry about working with VC's, we're all screened for smart".
Ok pretty well screened for smart but some are not so well screened for human.
Some people need to mature beyond "It's all about me" to realize that they should respond to someone who bothered to read what they wrote and asked a question about it. Unfortunately that maturation does just automatically happen with the passage of time or a formal education... it takes life events like kids, deaths, layoffs, etc...
If someone doesn't get that subtle but important point then I guess they are just casting their ideas out into the ether.
Chip,
Check out a book by Steven Shaviro called Connected: Or What It Means to Live in a Network Society. It addresses your concerns exactly. He maintains that the cogito of the network society is no longer "I think, therefore I am" rather "I am connected, therefore I exist." Anyway, I think you hit on the fundamental paradox of connectedness. That is, the more connected we are, the more isolated we feel. I think that has to do with the fact that being connected via technology is informational in nature, and the problem with information is that it is does not correspond with what we think of as part of our objective reality. I'll read more, but I have two other books to recommend. For a general discussion of a humanities based philosophy of technology as opposed to an engineering based one, read Mitcham's Thinking Through Technology. And for a great history of the philosophy of informatics in general check out N. Katherine Hayles's How We Became Posthuman. I'll send more offline.
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