Why my blog is better than Facebook

Today I realized why blogging beats Facebook. This post was originally intended to be a status update; but I could not fit it into 500 characters. I guess it would explain the curt, inexpressive style. The problem with Facebook and Twitter is that they kill the fun of exposition. Rather than droning on about this topic, I guess I will just say that social networking updates have, in a certain sense, affected the way everyone in the developed world writes. Metaphors, similes, non sequiturs, sesquipedalian loquaciousness (used either seriously, or ironically); the things that define good writing, are lost in the editing scramble to fit one's composition into the stifling restraint of 140 or 500 characters; much like how low budgets prevent pornographic movies from having good production values, a sensible storyline, and special effects.

Is this a renaissance of blogging? I have announced too many false dawns to go down that route again. Keep in mind, however, that in order to frequent a website from your home PC, all you need to do is bookmark the page, and ensure that it opens in one of your tabs whenever you open your web browser. Which I have done.

Weirdly enough, what I originally wanted to put up on Facebook will now look completely out of context to the last few paragraphs. C'est la vie. For your viewing pleasure, a video of Steve Jobs from January, 1984. He's announcing the launch of the Apple Macintosh; a computer so important that it ought to be called the Adam and Eve of all modern PCs. Hell, to this day Apple PCs are called Macs. 27 years. The Macintosh would be going through a quarter-life crisis right now...



Things that amazed me in this video:

1. People were going apeshit over applications that look ludicrously crude by modern standards. That made me think, "Well, duh! This video was made back when the Cold War was still going on!" (except for the "Well duh!" bit; my brain does not talk like a valley girl). That led me to... (stealth pun!)

2. The fundamentals of those applications are still the same even today in 2011. Word 2010 follows the same basic design as the word processing software shown in the video. 27 years and the same basic structure... that's pretty much immortality in the tech world.

3. All of this was the first time anyone had ever seen a word-processing software, a paint software, and basically the PC as we know it. We in India wouldn't see something like this until the mid-to-late 1990s!

4. While this was happening, Bill Gates was a nobody stealing Jobs' ideas and secretly shipping his new "Windows" operating system to Japan. Whether Jobs was an idiot, or Scully was idiot, or Gates was an evil mastermind / crook / business genius is irrelevant. This moment was to remain Steve Jobs' peak until 20 years later.

5. Noah Wyle, the guy who played Steve Jobs in Pirates of Silicon Valley, looks eerily like him. He even managed to duplicate the same mannerisms. That is some bloody brilliant research for an acting role!