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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Stranger in a Strangely Familiar Land
My first day in the far east, and I have the dubious fortune to run into three (count 'em) typhoons, all licking their lips at the sight of Tokyo. And yet it is the dirty gray clouds and constant anticipatory drizzle, the relative calm before the storms, that help me feel at home here; it is, for the time being, a very English climate. The excessive humidity, though not very English, reminds me of the four New York summers I suffocated through. And the forward tilt into the future which touches everything -- buildings, walkways, giant screens and vending machines -- reminds me of the Blade Runner-type world I always secretly wanted to live in.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not so in love with the world's most populous city to want to insert myself into its endless tower blocks for a substantial period of time (though that would not be out of keeping with the westward-ho trajectory of my life, which has so far catapulted me from England to California via the east coast). But I often say that I adore the San Francisco-Silicon Valley axis for its historically consistent desire to thrust itself five minutes into the world's future, technologically and philosophically speaking. If that is so, then Tokyo wants to live ten minutes into the future. Not just because videoscreens and futuristically funky architecture have been sprinkled everywhere with a kind of innocent glee, but also because of its wholesale cosmopolitanism; its ravenous adoption and effortless mingling of western corporate culture with timeless eastern sensibilities.
I sit here in a hotel room where I can charge up my American laptop in an American socket without need for an adaptor, where my every need is dealt with in English via a variety of media (phone, Internet, fax, interactive TV). Looking out across the Shinjuku area of the city, I can see half a dozen huge signs in English, stretching to all horizons; barely squinting, I'm able to imagine I'm in a kind of European version of Los Angeles. Earlier I took my hotel-property umbrella out for a walk and went shopping in an enormous department store called, in part, Times Square, where T-shirts were plastered in bizarre literary prescriptions for world peace. So the Japanese drive on the left, drink lots of tea and love radical (and radically nonsensical) English phrases.
No wonder I feel at home.
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