Author: Eyolf Østrem

. . . and so has mine. I have no clear idea what will go here, but a few unclear ones.
One: the “news” header of the main site has now tended to become more of a comments column, as the number of new tabs has diminished and my urge to communicate other things has increased. This is not necessarily wrong or bad, but rather an opportunity.
Another: I write quite a few mails in response to questions or remarks from people, with a character ranging from discussion of Dylan-oriented things to more general culturally oriented ramblings. I figured this would be a way to collect that, and also extend the communicability, and channel it, perhaps in a slightly different direction than the all-outs of the pool or r.m.d.
Three: “There are more important things in life than Dylan”. I said that, about a year ago. I intend for the range of topics to be taken up here to become wider than just Dylan and music. How about typography? Web design? Access databases? Knitting? (I kid you not)
Four: As a maintainer of a fairly well visited site in the world/space/culture that the Internet has become, I feel a growing responsibility towards/for this world/space/culture. “Towards” insofar as it consists of people, who spend large parts of their lives there. “For” insofar as I feel responsible for what I put out there, and for what I don’t. I watch with a mixture of a- and be-musement the obvious ease and naturalness with which my kids interact through the net. As much as I would hate to be the old fart who frowns at every change — for moral reasons (quite likely) or just because he feels left out — I will not either just sit uncritically and watch. In naturalness lies beauty and danger (yeah, the old fart rears his ugly head after all!) — that which glides effortlessly in meets with no resistance, no critique, no urge to overcome hurdles and take in more of the world.
It matters to distinguish between hyphens and dashes, because it has mattered enough to our predecessors to have felt meaningful to invest time and energy to provide for a distinction, and so it has shaped our society and the individuals in it, whether they know it or not; it is important to be aware of the source of our informations — we all know that Microsoft is evil, but what about google? Well, they say they’re not …