Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax

Micro-blogging is overrated. It suffers from the same problems as chat except that people can’t use it for cybersex very well. Talk politics and it becomes like playing with those padded nightsticks which were marketed under the name “Lovetaps”: a place designed for one thing — rest and sex in the bed and conversation with exchange of ideas on the channels — becomes a gladitorial pit, a place where people go to fight.

The thing I don’t like micro-blogging is that it reduces conversation and expression to the barb, the riposte, and the URL link. It’s difficult to spell out complete thoughts. You just can’t do it in 140 characters. The stage is ruled by the masters of sound bytes and I am not one of these. Maybe the term blogging is not apt for this interchange because Twitter and Identi.ca amount to a chimera where one post is chat, the next a hyper-compressed blog, and the next a classified ad. There are many who celebrate it for this, but I think the forum is too chaotic to be a true channel for intellectual and emotional exchange.

In the hands of the average technophile, it is gimmicky and unfocused. In my hands it’s a flavorless doughball.