The Internet

The first time I opened a computer: I had just set up Windows to run and it was my first experience with any computer - the thought occurred to me that Bill Gates was God. This was quite a blasphemous idea and I apologized to Heaven for thinking it but the wonder of the computer and all it makes possible was very real. And computer culture is an achievement of the baby boomer generation - those of us who think of ourselves as a group, who have lived all our lives as supernumerary ruffians and rockers with aspirations to genius.

I am calling my blog Doxa - the Greek word for 'opinion' - and the word is not always a compliment. Doxa is often opposed to logos - knowledge - and I have never proffered an opinion I did not have doubts about. Indeed I seldom open my mouth without feeling like a complete idiot. Knowledge is such a wonderful thing, solid and true. It is, however, not proprietary: it doesn't belong to anyone in particular and cannot be considered an aspect of personality, what makes an individual unique. Doxa, on the other hand - the weird and wonderful world of personal prejudice, slant, view and experience - is the mark of an individual. Doxa it is!


Those who create a personal web presence through chat use a fractured language that is very creative. I'm not going to use this mode of expression but would rather stick to the tried-and-true grammatically correct. Chat is fun but it degenerates quickly into pornography. There is sexual expression on the web - why should anyone be surprised about that - but it is sterile. Not for me... Maybe the odd emoticon once in a while :-)


Parenthesis: This 'not for me' position in the last paragraph sounds too rigid but it is meant with the greatest openness. Slang or cute expressions without the presence of the speaker is very poor in content: some very nice people communicate on the web but the tone is often that of a single voice, lost in space. I want to avoid that.


The written word has its own limitations as expression of self. 'Not for me' is the kind of thing I would never say in a real situation. I find it insulting, impolite, I do not like it when people say it to me. Yet when time comes to express an idea, there it is, part of my tool kit. I have a vague image of someone I know who thinks like that as I use it. I'm not sure whether this is a predominantly feminine experience but I often feel like I am expressing other people in my writings more than myself because of this: the picture puzzle I end up creating -my current doxa - is all mine, with consequences attending. But the elements are those of my environment.



Wikipedia is pure genius. One gets the absolute beginner view on anything on demand , and if something is not clear in one language, one merely skips to another. The NASA site allowed me to track the international space station with enough accuracy to see it go by at night; looking at the stars has been a new experience since then. GRAPH has allowed me to finally understand all that math that I have felt guilty about most of my life: sine(x) looks like this, 2sine(x) looks that, and here is sine(2x). At last...


MP3 music sounds like what it is: a tin drum and Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer's Night's Dream on midi is archiving for Mars, at best. (I am a real musician). I wouldn't mind hearing a Bach fugue done by a computer, however, and I listen to electronic music when working at the keyboard (for short periods: it clears the mind).


To sign off: a blog, I have concluded, is a spiritual quest, a means of sharing consciousness with others in a disinterested fashion. I hope to blog-in on a daily basis, post a little something everyday. Keeping a very public journal does force one to think of protecting one's privacy, though.

Let's see how it goes.