I got to deliver a talk to young journalists today, and I managed to sneak in a sliver of of 'everything about me' shit.
I'll tell you this - I am not sure what kind of job or position you can classify me in these days, but I believe the skills I have learned in journalism will always be useful.
I told the kids, I wanted to be a journalist for two reasons:
1. I wanted to be a comic book writer. Long story.
2. I believe that journalism is the last of the romantic disciplines. Not romantic as in, "Let's jump into this icy water and die together, Jack" or, "I'm not jumping, Robert, so fuck you and your alternative lifestyle."
Romantic as in the ideals of romanticism. Because really, at its very core, journalism is about the quest for truth, and there is nothing more romantic or idealistic than that.
And I have spoken, yelled, taunted and cajoled journalists for some years, to fucking drop the content and go for user experience.
I have been doing it for so long, that I believe the world has moved on. People KNOW about the idea already and have embraced it. There are so many social media shit flying around that my ideas are no longer novel or revolutionary. In essence, I wanted to do a Huffington Post, but Huffington Post did it first, so I am stuck with my dick out.
I believe in cycles. The Hindus call it yugas. I think that hardcore content might be making a comeback and for the Internet to behave as one of its primal, basic functions - that of being a true medium.
Users have experienced the thing. So the next step is unfeeling it. Internet will be made seamless and a part of life, ubiquitous and invisible. I believe that is the direction we are heading, what with the next generation being more comfortable with structure and rules than my own generation.
Religion is making a comeback on the young in a big way. The heathens and atheists who defined my era will soon come face to face with evangelical young people.
Structure, form will be paramount in the next few decades, as younger people take control of the world. Chaos is nearing its end and order will come to replace it. It is a cycle that is as inevitable as the spin of the earth causing the transition between day and night.
It is up to these youngsters, in the future, to shape the world we live in. My thoughts right now are of how to retire gracefully, and to be forgotten, for mine was a path of destruction.
And bla bla bla.
I had a good, full day. I did many things - most of them I enjoyed. And I am merely capping it off with the one thing I enjoy the most - writing. And sleeping.
See you after the breach.
