Our true selves?

When we're on vacation, do our characters show through more clearly than they do during our normal lives? When released from the constraints of the everyday, and set free to do whatever we want, are we more ourselves?

Probably. Which is why, now that the kids are asleep and my wife and in-laws are all sitting in the living room reading (it's a very Jane Austen scene-- everyone gathered together in the parlor for an evening's entertainment), I'm listening to an ancient Emerson Lake & Palmer CD, trying to iron out the kinks in this article on the death of cyberspace.

When you go back to a piece you worked on for a long time but then set aside for a few months, I usually find one of two things: Option A is that the basic structure is sound, and what I thought were gigantic problems or obstacles really are pretty minor (or even better, can be ignored entirely in the interests of tightening the article); Option B is that it's actually a mess, and should be junked. Fortunately, this piece is solidly in Option A territory, and I've just got to stay focused on the most interesting, glittery parts of the central argument-- that new technologies and services are going to eliminate the familiar distinction between cyberspace and real life-- and I can get this thing nailed. Whether anyone will have the bad sense to publish it or not is another question entirely.

Maybe I start my own institute on the side, and have it be the first report. Now that's an idea. I work at a think-tank, so for a hobby, I could have-- my own personal think-tank. I suppose lots of veterinarians have pets, and auto mechanics drive cars....

[To the tune of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, "Tarkus," from the album "Welcome back my friends...".]

Technorati Tags: cyberspace, digital/physical, pervasive computing, postacademic, work

Comments

[Gustav]

What about starting a virtual thinktank, bound together by blogs and social software instead of bricks and mortar. If you can have virtual fish tanks on your screen savers, there certainly is a place for a virtual think tank on the net.

Marshall McLuhan tried doing his own one-man think tank once, with a newsletter xeroxed to clients. Seems it wasn't a great success, for some reason. Now, with the net, such stuff could be done collaboratively.

[Manhattantransfer]

I typically have a very different reaction when I return to older articles I've written. To be perfectly frank and to throw all pretense of modesty aside, I usually find I'm amazed at how good they are. I think this is because my day-to-day life involves a whole host of distractions that actually cause me to forget the insights at which I arrive when properly concentrated on a subject.