After being side tracked by the final Harry Potter book (which was excellent), weddings (congrats to Irfhan and Gen) and work (Chicago is a good a place as any to find oneself)… I’m finally back to reading David Weinberger’s Small Pieces Loosely Joined and it is fantastic.

Favourite line so far:

It is no accident that the web is distracting. It is the Web’s hyperlinked nature to pull our attention here and there. But it is not at all clear that a new distractedness represents a weakening of our culture’s intellectual powers, a lack of focus, a diversion from the important work that needs to be done, a disruption of our very important schedule. Distraction may instead represent our interests finally finding the type of time that suits it best. Maybe when set free in a field of abundance, our hunger moves us from three meals a day to day-long grazing. Our experience of time on the Web, its ungluing and re-gluing of threads, may be less an artifact of the Web than the Web’s enabling our interest to find its own rhythm. Perhaps the Web isn’t shortening our attention span. Perhaps the world is just getting more interesting.

Amen.

Check out Weinberger’s blogs: Everything is Miscellaneous and Joho the Blog

Speaking of hyperlinked… Harley Y., a frequent reader and a fellow open-source affectionado noticed in Monday’s post that I was in Chicago. Being in town himself by chance he dropped me and email and we met up for dinner. Good times and conversation ensued… welcome to the world of the web, it’s not just online anymore.