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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
Friends, Bloggers, Countrymen ... lend your ears to these people. I come not to bury them, but praise them.
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Daily Blah for... Monday, January 02, 2006
Definitions
JUVE JUSTIFICATION (n). -- The subconscious desire to make a career in life out of whatever one did as a child. Usually expressed at the beginning of career options in the early twenties, often returned to in various mid-life crises.
Juve justification is part of the process of BIOGRAPHIZATION (n.), or trying to make one's life read like a biography while still living it and before actually achieving anything: the need to make your past as pertinent as possible to your future, for digestion by a mass audience, eg. imagining a narrator's voice-over saying "as a child, Jimmy already showed signs of being the world's greatest architect with his passion for Lego-building." Useful in television interviews, parties, and any situation where one is required to sum up one's life in five minutes.
Inability to use one's personal history in justifying one's career choice will result in BIOGRAPHOBIA (n.), or the fear of a non-digestible past. Biographobia increases with the height of one's ambition, the pace of one's career, and is especially prevalent in those already at the top. Politicians will suffer from biographobia if they came from dull middle-class backgrounds rather than the extremities of rich and poor, which are always media-friendly. It is biographizable for a leader to go to the University of Life, or to sit in Ivy League or Oxbridge bastions of privilege, but rarely anything in between.
MASSDIGESTABILITY (n.) -- the governing law of modern media; something a story must contain to be newsworthy, biographizable, and ultimately historically significant. Not merely appealing to the lowest common denominator, nor simply stereotyping; massdigestibility is based on the dualistic Hollywood principle of good guys and bad guys.
THE CLIO CURVE (n.) -- the amount to which media has been in the front line, writing the first draft of history. An upward curve, increasing with the amount and diversity of media; its projection forward suggests that eventually all events will be immediately fitted into the media's massdigestible version of history. History as a useful and effective discipline, separate from the media, will soon disappear.
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