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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... Monday, October 30, 2006
He Uses the Google? No, We Got the Google
So the blogosphere is in a predictable fit of hysterics over yet another Bushism. Last week the President told an interviewer (the lovely Maria Bartoromo, no less, who's had quite a busy year, getting the Fed Chair to make embarrassing comments and also interviewing me, which is about the only thing I have in common with those other two gentlemen) about "the things I've used on the Google." Naturally, it has become an instant hit, a meme to slot right alongside "the Internets." The cognoscenti are starting to insert the definite article before the decade's favorite noun/verb, as in: "can you look that up on the Google?" It began ironically, it will soon become part of the language, and it will forever be associated with Bush's amusing idiocy.
But I'm not laughing. I'm seething. Because I, Mr. President, came up with "the Google" a full eighteen months before you did. Working from home, I would often have a friend or two or five come over with their laptops and hang out in the spacious wifi-enabled kitchen of my old house. Invariably, I would be off the laptop, on the phone, fixing food, and need an answer to a random question. Up would go the cry: "who's got the Google?" It was shorthand for "who's got an open laptop with an open browser window with a Google search bar on it into which they have a spare moment to enter the following search term?"
"I've got the Google," someone would reply. It fast became our favorite call-and-response, so much so that it begged a parody of "I Got the Power," that early 1990s dancefloor hit by Snap!: "I Got the Google." It had all the momentum of a beautiful meme -- and then Bush goes and spoils it all by saying somethin' stupid. Thanks, Dubya.
Well, this may be tilting at windmills, given our relative influence on the culture, but I urge you dear faithful Blah readers to boycott the Bush meme and use mine instead. The guy's already got "Internets" and "is our children learning" and "putting food on our families." He's doing just fine on the memorably-mangled language front. Let's not "use" the Google. Let's say we "got" the Google. Thanks, dear readers, and may the Google be with you.
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