Is This Thing On?: A Blog Is Born
Hello. If you are reading this then you've stumbled onto the very first entry of Manufactured Dissent, a new blog written by a white male on a late model iBook, someplace in New York City. If you're a fan of linguistics (and who isn't), perhaps you're aware that the name of this blog is lifted from the title of a Noam Chomsky book called Manufacturing Consent. I prefer to think of my borrowing as a referential homage, but so be it. I am drunk with the power of the First Amendment and, dammit, I'm grabbing the reins of my inalienable right to free speech, starting today. If this means pissing off the admirable Prof. Chomsky, that is a price I will gladly pay. You, dear reader, are worth any indignation I might suffer.
As you are considering this blog, a fair question may enter your mind: Why does the World Wide Web need yet another electronic journal? Will this blog save the environment or spread peace to war-torn nations? Will it bring back dead loved ones? Will it serve and protect this great nation? Will it, in short, make life feel magical again? In all likelihood, it will not. But then again, that is beauty of a blog. One never knows. Other bloggers have received robust book deals despite a lack of "traditonal" journalistic/writerly experience (I'm not standing in judgment, really, so much as I am curious about the land grab). With that as a backdrop, why can't this one aspire to relieve the misery of mankind? With the right font choice and a cable modem, after all, can't we do anything we set our minds to?
I believe we can.
And with Manufactured Dissent, I hope to prove this. Tune back in daily (or every so often) for more ideas, more inquiry and, of course, a healthy dose of idiocy.
For now, I will leave you with this thought: Someday soon, the last person born before the invention of (and, more importantly, widespread dissemention of) television is going to pass away. What this means is that there will cease to be any living person who can recall the world before television. The same, of course, was true of fire, indoor plumbing and radio, so I'm not sure precisely why this notion frightens me, but it does. At the very least, it is something I do think about, though I've not yet figured out a way to write about it intelligently (as is obvious from this post). Certainly, Steven Johnson would disagree with my curmudgeonly view.
Let's talk soon!
