Every good rhythm needs a good break. Every race car needs the occasional pit stop. Every server needs a reboot. Every cyber-Citizen needs the occasional vacation. And thats exactly what I"ve been doing. I could say I would have been overly busy, swamped with real life or even write up a convincing post about an alien abduction (and the fact I forgot to take my digital camera). But to be brutally honest with you ? I have been on holiday. Not only the kind of holiday that you go on every year, where you get to pack up your stuff and live life like some kind of refugee somewhere on a meadow in swampy Swansea for 5 days straight, No also the kind where you click of the binary switch in your head a little bit and stand back from the digital rat race we call the blogosphere.
Call it recharging, Call it catharsis, Call it taking stock of the virtual world around you.. I have indeed stepped down from the never ending RSS-feed of cyberspace and decided it would be a good idea to go and read a book (or two) and come back refreshed. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been without an IP for long, but instead of blogging away into the great beyond as many of us do, telling each other about our hamsters and commenting on comments from somebody’s youtube video.. I have become a consumer for a few weeks.
For a short while I have been a mere consumer. One of these blog-surfing, link clicking, downloading peasants that we call end-users. A consumer of the web. I took a step back from the whole "This is what he said, so i said this and then he said that" style of interaction on the internet and thought about just what I was missing out on. And I have come to quite an amazing conclusion : I have been missing out !
The one thing I have been missing out on .. has been IMPORTANT STUFF. Lets face it. Half the crap that drudges down our internet pipe every single day into our RSS readers is incredibly frivolous. A quick check of DIGG at the moment ( As much as I hate DIGG , I must point it out as a reference here ) I’m a little bit saddened at the sight of what keeps the average internaut occupied these days : "Man finds face of Homer Simpson on one euro coin" "Here is a picture that looks like Obama is gonna punch a preacher in the face" and the list goes on and on. Think about it ! This is the realm of the average internaut. The internaut who is wielding the power of the awesome tool of the internet, Somebody who, through the power of computers has access to a network that enables him to interact with the entire planet .. and … He’s looking a pictures of Homer on a one euro coin ?
Meanwhile somewhere in former soviet union an elderly lady gets bombed to bits in her house because a Russian rocket was misaligned .. But nothing on Digg about that. How disappointing is it to see that the internauts these days care more about a Chinese restaurant thats called "translation server error" then about other issues. I don”t know If Mr Bernards-Lee (or Robert Caliau for that part) ever dreamed of the power of the internet and about the way it could change our planet forever… only to be disappointed if they see what the average internaut cares about these days. I was expecting a rogue and free TV station to stand between the ashes of the Georgian capital, broadcasting with a webcam and stolen wifi, showing the people of the planet what was going on through Youtube .. but nothing there on the whole thing.
So I think I have seen enough as a consumer of the internet. I think I have had my fare share of Youtube video’s. I"ve listened to enough podcasts, I’ve read plenty of posts and clicked on enough images .. while remaining silent. The only way I can complain about the state of the net today and get away with it , is by contributing. So i’m calling my Hiatus to an end. I’m coming back from my user-contrituted-vacation with the sole mission of chipping in my poor measly five bytes. This blog is back open for business. Oh by the way : So is the whole comment section .. so spew me your gutts !