On the decline of conversation
This is becoming one of those blogs where every new blog post starts with "It's been a long time since I posted here".
I must admit that some days I miss the old Livejournal days. It seemed like there was a lot more conversation and back-and-forth on lj, in part because the blogging platform made it easier to do that. Most other platforms are not conversation friendly, I find. The very act of commenting on your average blog takes so many steps that I often lose interest mid-way through typing some impossible-to-decipher code to prove I'm human. And then there's the whole tracking of replies thing, which some blogs do ok and some don't do at all, but none seem to manage as well as LJ did.
Other times I wonder if this is why conversation about the local reading/writing scene seems to have declined. Or perhaps it was already declining, or moving elsewhere, and that was just a symptom.
At any rate, I don't find the whole blogging experience as interesting these days; it feels more like a lot of people just talking at you, rather than conversations.
I know twitter and Facebook have taken up some of that role, but they're not the same. You can't have an in-depth conversation on either, I find.
Perhaps I am just behind the times. Is there really interesting discussion about the local scene happening some place I am not aware of? Or has it really gone quiet?
I know we are part of a broader scene, now. The Australian focus of the early 2000s seems to have dissipated, to a large degree. And there are many benefits to that, to being part of an international community of writers. But I wonder whether we have lost something too.
For the last decade and a bit, the Australian small press SF scene has been a large part of my life. But lately it has felt like there is an increasing absence where it used to be. I don't know if that is just my own perception. But I don't really feel like I'm part of it any more. And I'm not sure where I'm drifting *to*.
Anyway, perhaps that helps to explain in some small way my silence here. I guess I need to work out what this blog is for.