Digital skimming

Excellent observation in Things magazine as follows:

Project Gutenberg is a remarkable resource, yet one that feels strangely detached from the web’s other key data sources. Part of Gutenberg’s attraction is the added perception of depth and history it gives to information found online, much of which is missed in general searches that favour newness and ‘news’. In recent months this ‘digital skimming’ has started to get us down, as if the internet is a thick crust of largely superficial information that is increasingly hard to penetrate.New tools don’t help us dig any deeper. It’s a question of resolution more than anything, the way analogue tends to slip unsatisfactorily into the digital realm, the sharp edges pixellated, compression remnants that obscure, not enhance.

It’s difficult not to concur while I skim through the sand dunes of site updates snared by RSS to my Newsfire reader. So much of the content is the quick smile, wow isn’t it a crazy world sort of thing. I suspect this has a lot to do with the relatively poor facilitation of debate engendered by the blog format. Commenting is comments, not really interaction. Seems like mailing lists have generally had their day (or is that just me?) which is a shame because that’s where I’ve experienced and taken part in the most stimulating online interaction. I’ve no idea how many if anybody reads this blog, certainly almost nobody comments. It would be nice to see contributions, but ultimately I’m happy chattering into the silence, it’s a place to sketch my own thoughts, capture little things of interest, a staging ground on miscellaneous journeys to miscellaneous places. Oops there I go digressing.