Brunch

[drscott]

Had a pleasant Sunday brunch with the ECR gang, or at least the part of it that used to do Sunday brunch with Andy and Randy. Mark and Johns son Kyle was cute, but since I was sitting next to him, I didn't get to hear much of the adult conversation from the other end of the table. I can only imagine the strain of having a small child -- Mark is so extremely attentive to him, which is unlike my upbringing, where, by that age, I was expected to keep quiet and make few demands in public. But if care and attention has any effect, he's going to be one smart kid when he grows up.

Someone mentioned they read Paul's blog. Which reminds me to mention how little of mine is readable if you're not an LJ "friend." I tend to write mixed entries with an occasional factoid or opinion I don't want let loose on the whole Googleverse, so I keep about half my posts "friends only."

Comments

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Whew! I'm glad I'm an LJ friend then, as I always look forward to anything you write. If the focus gets even narrower, keep adding me to the list..and even narrower...Hmmm... that would mean you and I talk on email. That's right....We do that from time to time too:) Lucky me! HUGS!

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Oh, you are always included. But as we watched the Internet develop, those of us in the community that started it (ARPA computer researchers) realized the potential for abuse as a permanent record of indiscretions. Having finished my career, I'm in the rare position of having no one who can hurt me by digging up old writings, but most people are not in the same position -- it appears academic search committees are already discriminating against candidates who have blogged at all, much less revealed anything untoward. My concern now is more about preventing anyone I talk about from being surprised by my comments -- if I want to be free to reveal my opinions of them, it's wise to prevent those opinions from becoming too readily accessible via search engine.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I know there's quite a flurry of LJ reading after convention. I didn't go to the LJ tip there, since I didn't feel a part of 'that gang'. :-)

So my etiquette for figuring out how to use LJ, know what to do with 'friending' and such is still evolutionary.

But I will say I've read a LOT of interesting stuff this past week!

Take care!

[ozdachs.livejournal.com]

apparentparadox started an interesting thread on "Friends" a while back. I feel like a semantic dinosaur myself, hung up over the term and etiquette.

I'm coming around to "LJ friending" people whose blogs and thoughts seem interesting, even if I don't {yet} know them in non-electronic life. If someone doesn't like my comment, I won't take offense if they delete it!

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

The median user of LJ is a 17-yo girl. The terminology was selected to be as obvious as possible for the naive user. For the older subgroup we have going here, "friend" is misleading; "people whose entries I want to read" is all it means. There are definitely real-world friends whose entries would not be worth reading, but there are many, many people who write interesting stuff and yet are not close enough to me to label as friends. "Friend" implies a degree of mutual obligation and regard based on experience.

But OTOH this kind of medium amplifies the number of people you can keep in touch with. I would never have time to follow this many people's lives this closely without it, and I have real-world friends now I would never have met without this community.

I used to me a very private person, worried that somehow being open and talking about my feelings would be used against me. Since I grew up in a mildly homophobic, stick-out-and-get-hammered-down environment, that was probably a survival skill. But now I feel more inclined to let everyone see the real me -- and by their reaction I will know who my real friends are.