I need reminders

The older I get, the more I seem to need reminders.

I received a chain email yesterday which reminded me of an aphorism I had forgotten. The email ended by urging the reader to pass it on to ten friends but it stopped short of saying I would have bad luck for the rest of this life and until I was 75 in the next life too if I didn't pass it on.

Anyway, in the middle of the message were three lines:

Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas.

This made me think of blogging. Saw a few blogs tonight with people gossip. Celeb stuff bound to get a lot of traffic, e.g. “Tom Cruise says it’s OK for his wife to scream in childbirth,” or others about things that happened; a report about “Scorpion on Plane Bites Man on Leg”.

But there are blogs which discuss IDEAS. That’s what I hoped, hope, am hoping? this blog will become. If people are mentioned, their ideas will be highlighted. If events occur, the ideas behind the events will be emphasized.

The aphorism oversimplifies, as all proverbs, epithets, aphorisms, maxims, precepts and so on do. There are people whose lives are worth discussing. Just as there are events we should try to understand.

I like to read blogs relating to how technology affects the way we communicate. See those of Robert Scoble, Don Dodge, Joi Ito or Rebecca MacKinnon for starters.

In this blog, I thought I should sometimes write about communication artefacts (like pencils) and products (like iPods). Mediocre products can be as ephemeral as gossip about people or events. Here today, gone tomorrow. Good products can turn into artefacts and evolve and stay with us.