Hello, this is my "web-log." I am doing this mainly because I have to, for work. Hereafter, therefore, I will remain 'anti-this', the web-logger from beyond. Here are some interesting ideas along these lines. First is a book from an author who appeared on the Daily Show- Lee Siegel

http://www.amazon.com/Against-Machine-Being-Human-Electronic/dp/0385522657/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204076332&sr=1-1

In it he speaks of the separation this medium brings-- not the connectivity. Now, I don't want to bring the ire of anyone reading this, for fear of being labelled negative, or something. However, as I say, I am 'anti-this', my clarion call, my mantra. Here is a quote from Siegel:
As with the car, criticism of the Internet’s shortcomings, risks, and perils has been silenced, or ignored, or stigmatized as an expression of those two great American taboos, negativity and fear of change. As with the car, a rhetoric of freedom, democracy, choice, and access has covered up the greed and blind self-interest that lie behind what much of the Internet has developed into today. (end of quote) So, I am sure there are those who would label me as 'negative' and 'afraid of change' because of this slant I am taking.

another quote-- the “surreal world of Web 2.0, where the rhetoric of democracy, freedom and access is often a fig leaf for antidemocratic and coercive rhetoric; where commercial ambitions dress up in the sheep’s clothing of humanistic values; and where, ironically, technology has turned back the clock from disinterested enjoyment of high and popular art to a primitive culture of crude, grasping self-interest.”

Along these lines, another neo-luddite, whom I read about, Sven Birkerts:From the threshold, I think, we need to distinguish between kinds of knowledge and kinds of study. Pertinent here is German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey's distinction between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften), which seek to explain physical events by subsuming them under causal laws, and the so-called sciences of culture (Geisteswissenschaften), which can only understand events in terms of the intentions and meanings that individuals attach to them.
To the former, it would seem, belong the areas of study more hospitable to the new video and computer procedures. Expanded databases and interactive programs can be viewed as tools, pure and simple. They give access to more information, foster cross-referentiality, and by reducing time and labor allow for greater focus on the essentials of a problem. Indeed, any discipline where knowledge is sought for its application rather than for itself could only profit from the implementation of these technologies. To the natural sciences one might add the fields of language study and law.
But there is a danger with these sexy new options–and the rapture with which believers speak warrants the adjective–that we will simply assume that their uses and potentials extend across the educational spectrum into realms where different kinds of knowledge, and hence learning, are at issue. The realms, that is, of Geisteswissenschaften, which have at their center the humanities.
In the humanities, knowledge is a means, yes, but it is a means less to instrumental application than to something more nebulous: understanding. We study history or literature or classics in order to compose and refine a narrative, or a set of narratives about what the human world used to be like, about how the world came to be as it is, and about what we have been–and are–like as psychological or spiritual creatures. The data–the facts, connections, the texts themselves–matter insofar as they help us to deepen and extend that narrative. In these disciplines the process of study may be as vital to the understanding as are the materials studied.
Given the great excitement generated by Perseus, it is easy to imagine that in the near future a whole range of innovative electronic-based learning packages will be available and, in many places, in use. These will surely include the manifold variations on the electronic book. Special new software texts are already being developed to bring us into the world of, say, Shakespeare, not only glossing the literature, but bathing the user in multimedia supplements. The would-be historian will step into an environment rich in choices, be they visual detailing, explanatory graphs, or suggested connections and sideroads. And so on. Moreover, once the price is right, who will be the curmudgeons who would deny their students access to the state-of-the-art?
Being a curmudgeon is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Someone has to hoist the warning flags and raise some issues that the fast-track proselytizers might overlook. (end quote)

Note in that the point that this is a good medium for the sciences, not the humanities. On that note, I announce the purpose of this 'web-log.' I will uncover and point out 'neat' little things some may have not noted about this work-place-- from old cool books to small neat things. No more of the above, BUT REMEMBER WHERE i'M COMIN'FROM...

ANTI-THIS