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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.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
"The Blah is becoming a daily destination for me." - Richard Marsh, Playwright
"I like it, and I don't." - Fiona Hogg, Teacher
"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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Daily Blah for... Thursday, March 17, 2005
Once and Future Heroes
Okay, so I promised to tell you a little about all the stuff that was going on last week. Here goes:
George Lucas = the Star Wars honcho "in conversation" with journo Jim Daley, in front of an audience of teachers, talking about his vision for education. I say "in conversation" in quotes because this was no interview; Daley would ask a question, sit back respectfully, and Lucas would answer in a rambling manner for the next fifteen minutes, utterly uninterrupted. I had no issue with what he was saying -- let's teach kids the grammar of visual as well as verbal communication, because that's what they're bombarded with -- but had no interest in hearing it said fifteen times over in slightly different ways. "In conversation" suggests he's going to be guided onto a variety of topics, prodded to be as personal as possible, and perhaps -- dare I say it -- even challenged with devil's advocacy. In the presence of billionaires, I guess, even "why?" men become "yes" men. (Lucas is a recluse, after all; he's doing almost no press for episode III, and this was the first time I'd had a chance to catch a glimpse of him). Perhaps Daley feared that if challenged, Lucas might pull a Howard Hughes, run off to his private room, grow his fingernails and urinate in milk bottles. Or perhaps he was sitting there stewing, thinking the same thing as me: here is the man who filled my childhood with the light of imagination, earned the goodwill of my generation, and then squandered it all to make hideous sequels.
Best game ever = Will Wright, the man who has replaced Lucas in my affections, demoing Spore before an adoring crowd at GDC. Spore is the game that Wright has described to me in interviews over the years as "Powers of Ten" and "Sim Everything"; a game where you take your fully customizable species from the bacterial level to ruling a galactic civilization. I'd smile at the idea, but never assumed such an ambitious project would ever see the light of day in an industry famed for having shelved many such grandiose projects. "The demo is held together with duct tape and bits of string," said Wright before he showed it, in a masterful example of how to lower expectations. It was perfect. Every time he pulled back -- to a world view, a solar view, a galactic view -- our jaws would drop. We watched his unlikely species, galumphing tripods with stingers and googly eyes, pull themselves out of the sea, escape land predators, make whoopee (to a hiliarous smooth jazz soundtrack), lay eggs and mutate over generations, build cities, launch UFOs, and finally wipe out a civilization in a neighboring star system. The history of life in fifteen minutes or less. Wright has it absolutely, er, right when he says that this is what players want -- the ability to create their own stories in as vast a sandbox as possible. He got a standing ovation, and I sat there and thought: I'm going to be playing this game for the rest of my life.
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