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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... Saturday, June 18, 2005
Million-dollar Ideas: The Love Wiki
A semi-regular series of "my God! Wouldn't it be great if someone made a business out of ..." concepts.
1. The Marriage Counselling Wiki
So you and your beloved are at each other's throats again. Instead of wasting hours in therapy, why not build a Wiki together? A Wiki, that is, about your marriage. Its past, its present state and its purpose. Then -- and this is the useful bit -- argue the hell out of it.
This would be an easy transiton, as the natural early stage of any Wiki's development exactly resembles a marital dispute. There's a lot of "but you said ..." followed by "that's absolute crap, what I really said was" and "no, you idiot, that's not what you said" -- just automated.
Initially, nothing constructive would be built. For days, weeks or even--if it is a particularly divisive situation--months, what would follow would be deletion after counter-deletion from the troubled couple.
Then, ever so slowly, sentences that spouses actually agree on would start to pop out of the ether. It could start with something as simple as which day they first met and which movie they first saw together. And when sentences start to meet, clinging to each other for support, they give birth to paragraphs. Paragraphs lead ineluctably to more paragraphs. The truth of things, the neutral third-party view, begins to evolve with growing confidence. (Best of all, No family member or friend need get deputized as a supposedly neutral third party).
Where agreement cannot be found, wary truces are declared, as there's always room in a Wiki to explain exactly what the dispute is and where both sides stand on the topic. Then, finally, the day comes when the Wiki web site is released to the public.
So where's the business opportunity? Well, there's always a need for tech support for the less web-savvy. Writing support for the less, er, able to write. And emotional support from Wiki veterans, who would be on hand to assure that it's really okay to say that -- and to delete anything and everything you want.
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