2/28/2007

Interdome is my past time, but could it be my job?

I watched a segment of a Frontline documentary on PBS last night about changes in the media. A lot of it deal with the "blogosphere", and how it may or may not be siphoning interest away from traditional sources of media, etc., which has somehow become news itself for most media sources. Insert headline, "Newspapers Lie Unread in the Streets" here... hahaha.

The special also drew attention to some actually interesting things that at least I hadn't heard mentioned before, although I've thought them many times. For instance, now news agencies are expected to turn a profit, and so are accordingly turning to more entertainment oriented news, like "hidden camera" exposes and celebrity news. Also of interest was that many papers are turning to local news to win readers, because they can get the corner on the market this way, while anyone with a computer can report on the national stories.

But what I really took away from this was that the paper print industry is doomed. Of course, I naturally take this away from many things, seeing as how I would like to make more paper things in the future, yet people have little interest. Although I have sneaking senses of paranoia for many reasons, not all of them hallucinatory, one I have been feeling more often of late is that I must learn html otherwise I will never get a job ever. This program made me think that this was an astute paranoia. It's not merely learning some html tags in order to be computer literate, either. It seems that to really make it in media these days, you have to not only have cutting edge content, but your form has to be amazing as well. It's not just streaming video, its taggable, uploadable, searchable streaming video. It's not just podcasts, its portable, tradable, interactive podcasts. Semiotics used to be a clever manipulation of words, but now in order to write you have to know how to make the paper as well.

So I'm doomed. Burn my corpse with my books. That is, unless I am an html savant and I don't know it. Or, if you'd like to pay me to write for you. Call me?

The Re-Birth of the Interdome

And after the interdome was dead, it was re-born anew, with twice the powers and even better elasticity!

Welcome to the new Interdome. The old incarnation was basically an archive of stuff from my Grinnell Plan. That archive still exists, and it can be found in the links bar.

But the Interdome was meant for higher purposes than "insular community archiver". This Interdome is ready to face the world, and usher the 'dome into a new world of deliverance.

Here we will be getting a look into my head. Hopefully, after a matter of months, you, the reader, will become nearly as sarcastic, pessimistic, and generally downcast as myself. That is the best I could ever hope to accomplish.

And so we sally forth, into the world of text that surrounds us, dispatching its various creatures and daemons to a hell that for them will be paradise compared to the existence they suffered as actual virtuality. The crusade begins, and no captains of verbage will be spared the sweet and victorious salvation that we shall bestow.