I have joined forces with two fellow amateur gourmets and started blogging about my kitchen exploits. It took a swift kick (from a certain friend we’ve heard from in this space before) to convince me that there was enough time in the day to add this activity, and now that I’m in it, I am hooked. So where previously I have tried to sneak the occasional pseudo food posting into this space, now things will be neatly divided–just as the internet intended!
This divide and conquer mentality, however, got me thinking about a day last winter when Orange County Register music critic Timothy Mangan posted his martini recipe to his newspaper’s dining blog but also made mention of it in his usual classical music space. Audiences meshed, and music and cocktail fans came together to passionately debate the subtle variations between vermouth distilleries. The community expanded (if briefly). It was as if we went on a field trip together. It was a beautiful thing.
So when I read about how we are trading the open internet for app-specific content delivery, I got a bit of a sinking feeling similar to the one I get every time I look at the 12-deep stack of unopened Harper’s magazines on my coffee table. I still feel like I read a lot each day, but now that I sit at my computer every morning and don’t commute to work, gone are those unexpected but powerful moments when I read about people and places I would never otherwise have known about, and do so simply because they are profiled in the magazine that I have stashed in my bag for when my subway train is “held momentarily” for 20 minutes. You may be able to Google your way to any bit of information you could need, but accidental enlightenment seems to take some serious commitment and concentration in 2010. There may be 800 unread posts in my Google reader, but I know from experience that most of them will be just more of the same. This seems to indicate the need for an active readjustment of how I distribute my attention every day if I am to have any shot at continuing to grow as a person. I can’t imagine I am alone in this frustration.
Circling this all the way around to music then (hey, I was getting there), no matter what genre or artist we are advocating for, do we need to be adjusting our efforts due to declining opportunities for chance discovery? Will there be a reaction to this boxing up of information and an audience hungry for something new that we can be prepared to feed when the time comes?
While you’re thinking that over, feel free to stop by the kitchen for a snack anytime!