Bone Dry Future

I’m going to a fancy-pants event tomorrow night at which each one of us — 20 in all — has to talk for three minutes about an impending significant technology, company, idea or trend. Since all 19 other attendees are certifiably smarter than I am — I can prove it — and since I am hypersensitive to what others think of me, I am having a small anxiety attack that has required me to consume my own weight in Cheezits in the past hour.

In the past, in my panic I’d blurt our “Love,” but with “Love Is the Killer App” on the cover of FastCompany (and the founder of FastCompany in attendance), my fallback answer has been co-opted. Would “Hate” work? Can I get away with “Ginger” and a knowing look?

There isn’t a chance in hell that I know about some trend, technology or company that these folks haven’t either initiated or already dismissed with an imperious wave of their hands. So, I’m thinking about saying something like:

The importance of the weblog phenomenon isn’t so much that it enables people to publish their breakfast menus or even their genuine insights. It’s that we now know what our “avatars” on the Net are going to be: not graphical cartoon representations but our body of writing. You are what you write. On the Web we are writing ourselves into existence. This introduces into the self the same issues of control, inspiration, invention, deception and play as have always been present in the relationship of authors to what they write.

Hmm, sounds deep without actually meriting much thought, which is fine since by the time I’m done, they will have moved onto the next person in line. Vague, ethereal, and if said with confidence, may not have the tire-air smell of truly vapid ideas.

If you have something better, let me know quick!

Categories: Uncategorized dw