84 Charring Cross Rd
I'm just sitting through this old film again. It's a nice film, friendly, not exactly an action film. It's about an american book lover who strikes up a friendship with the staff of a London bookshop who obtain cheap copies of the books she is after. The whole shop read her books and often write back, during WWII she even sends them tinned meat and eggs.
Watching this it strikes me that her letters are not that far from a blog, all the staff in the shop read them and ocassionally another employee will drop her a letter back. What happens on Live Journal is not so far from this really. Apart from the sending of tinned meats (I'm a veggie).
I suppose the problem with the internet now is the sheer variety of different communications media available. I use quite a few badly. Flickr is good for photographs, Multiply is good for odd groups of people linked via other friends, Live Journal seems to be a bit more definitive, a traditional blog but lacks some of the features of other communications medium.
I still use ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN and of course IRC. Not to forget email and the forums on various web sites I use. with all this variety of chat it seems that communities on the net are more likely to fragment rather than coalesce. I suppose groups of people who already know one another will alight on one. But what if you want to introduce a friend from Live Journal to one on Multiply, or someone from Flickr to a group in LJ? I suppose that people who are so inclined will naturally be drawn into other online communities. There should eb some kind of index of these groups to allow people to find the best of them.
Anyway enough of this rambling.
Martin
Watching this it strikes me that her letters are not that far from a blog, all the staff in the shop read them and ocassionally another employee will drop her a letter back. What happens on Live Journal is not so far from this really. Apart from the sending of tinned meats (I'm a veggie).
I suppose the problem with the internet now is the sheer variety of different communications media available. I use quite a few badly. Flickr is good for photographs, Multiply is good for odd groups of people linked via other friends, Live Journal seems to be a bit more definitive, a traditional blog but lacks some of the features of other communications medium.
I still use ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN and of course IRC. Not to forget email and the forums on various web sites I use. with all this variety of chat it seems that communities on the net are more likely to fragment rather than coalesce. I suppose groups of people who already know one another will alight on one. But what if you want to introduce a friend from Live Journal to one on Multiply, or someone from Flickr to a group in LJ? I suppose that people who are so inclined will naturally be drawn into other online communities. There should eb some kind of index of these groups to allow people to find the best of them.
Anyway enough of this rambling.
Martin