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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
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"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... Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Taking Stage-Managed Press Events to the Next Level
I came down to LA early this time. Normally I get to E3 as late as I possibly can, and leave on the earliest available flight when it's all over on Friday. (I've just realized with a sense of horror that this is my sixth E3). But I'd never done the Big Three press conferences before -- Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo -- and this year all three were announcing new consoles (the PS3, Xbox 360 and Revolution, respectively). So if I was going to have the full week experience, this would be the year.
Press conferences? That's a laugh. Nobody could imagine having a question and answer session after these things. These were more like staged rallies, with thousands of journalists standing before a soundstage so overly grandiose it would have embarrassed the Nuremberg event planning council. Microsoft had rows of demographically sound young stooges of all races behind the presentation, as if this were a political rally. In many ways, it was. Swathes of executives appeared before us, reading scripts from giant teleprompters (which many of us journalists prefered to look at, rather than the executives) and told us how excited they were to tell us how they were going to take gaming to the next level, and other such cliched rot. Then we'd get quick video clips of unfinished games that won't be out for a year, all set to what sounded like the exact same industrial techno track with unecessary levels of bass. Somewhere in this hellish city, someone is making a big pile of money by blending testosterone filled guitars and beats for game demos.
Meanwhile, we were still seething from the hideous organization -- an hour wait to get our valet-parked cars back after the Sony event, an hour wait to get our press passes from Microsoft -- and laughing at the Sony security guard who threatened to take away our film if we kept taking pictures of the Sony lot. Film? What's that?
That said, for all the dismal and overly technical presentation that surrounded it, the PS3 rocks harder than Gibraltar. The games shown were all much of a muchness -- the same old racing, fighting and shooting stuff front-and-center -- but as demonstrations of what the machine was capable of, they were breathtaking. The lighting and skin effects were stunning. They captured Alfred Molina from Spider Man 2, made him virtual, and you could barely tell the difference. So I'm glad I went. But next year, I'm staying home and catching the webcast instead.
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