die puny humans
One of my favorite websites was Die Puny Humans, author Warren Ellis' research blog where he just posted weird and funny links of things from around the interwubs; things that often made it into his later writing. He eventually dumped it, probably because there soon became no need for it as a thousand other websites began doing the same thing, paging through news, blogs, and links and like curators in some interwub museum, posting the best they found on their own website. The Patch Work Years, Ellis called them in a recent blog. Taking a swatch from here, an old link from there and making up something else that somehow equaled your very own website. No orginal content, just linkies to somewhere else:
"Wouldn’t it be nice if we could stand up now and say, okay, these are the post-curation years? The world does not need another linkblog. What is required, frankly, is what we’re supposed to call “content” these days. When I were a lad, back in the age of steam, we called this “original material.”
I totally agree with Ellis, except I find that most of the sites I visit are nothing but these curated link blogs. And while I wish I was the kind of person who could generate original material constantly, I'm not. I agonize too much over my stupid little blogs, let alone my fiction and I don't think I'm clever enough right now to do it. So, I'm just going to start using this blog as my catch-all commonplace notebook. My own little research quilt of patchwork links. Sorry, Warren. Maybe it will all lead to my knitting these strands together into something new.