Blogs and Old Friends

While I was at CHI, and emptying out my woefully small stack of business cards, I kept thinking, "Well, yeah I want your card too, but what I really want is your blog URL." I suspect the same was going on in reverse. Over dinner, one researcher suggested I blog about a recent book published by a former grad school friend of mine vs. my book (the real one, not the edited collection), and that I ought to point out the similarity in the social phenomena we were describing in different mediated communication situations. I don't expect she knew I had a blog at all that this would work on, and whether it would really "work" in the sense of getting the conversation "out there" from here, is entirely another question -- but still! It's interesting as a meta-comment on research chitchat these days. People really do suggest blogging as a way of talking to each other in research land, not just in poptechculture land. (Well, of course they do. I just haven't found all their blogs yet, darn it.)

At CHI I saw a bunch of people from my old research lab days, and in well-timed coincidence, while I was there I got email from an old friend from AT&T who was not at CHI and with whom I'd long ago lost touch. He used to run a cool websurf mailing list with commentary on odd sites he'd found on the net. Of course he has a blog now, and I think his observations would entertain some of my readers. (He was the source of the "what's hard" hierarchy story I cited in the "invisible work" post comments, although I muchly shortened his story.)

Check out tingilinde, the blog of a former Bell Labs physicist turned Internet guru, who is also an amazing Photoshop artist and now a paint artist as well!