Distributed Mind

I was thinking about how I should update my home page. The thing is right now, this blog is doing most of what would usually end up on my home page - in a different format, but in a nearly identical role and similar if not identical content despite the format difference. Here content is provided in smaller kernels that must be combined in a natural, not synthetic way, where as on a home page most of my content would be combined in an organized, hierarchical way. Sometimes that is appropriate, but usually it can be done either way. I can put fractals here or on my home page. One way collects, this way allow you to see what I am thinking as I do it. This suggests a somewhat complementary role, in fact. But right now I don't have enough to make a really complete home page; just small pieces showing up here. (Obviously, a blog could be part of a home page, but that is not the way right now I am doing it.)

Where I am really going with this is that I am finding I favor the blog model for the moment because it is a currently favored model of interaction and content distribution on the Internet. If less people understood the model, or used the model less, I would probably be more traditional. Personally, I do favor the more traditional model. Obviously, chronological content is not going away, and I won't stop producing it mysefl either, but I think more polished, more static content will come back into vogue, and when it does, I will go back that way. I actually would now (not go back to entirely, but use the two complementarily), but I don't really have the time to commit to do it properly. I think though we should not pretend blogging in its current state is a permanent institution. There will always be blogs, just as there always have been in different forms (newspapers, magazines, and journals are really just much slower forms of blogs - complete with comments and sometimes even trackbacks!), but I think they will in a few years cease to be such a direct, immediate, and comprehensive method of communication.

(This is not so much a case of following fads, I would argue, but rather choosing the medium of the moment; I think there is a time for that, especially if at the moment the message fits that medium well.)