Earlier today I was on the panel of: THIS CONVERSATION IS BEING BLOGGED: Our lives, online, all the time, in the trend towards lifelogging

And I’m feeling a bit of peer pressure here: Paul and Terrell both wrote about their topics ahead of time, and I didn’t. So I’ll write about it now. Also I’m amused by the recursiveness of blogging about this panel, and the fact that it was videorecorded. I’ll add a link to the video when it’s put online, thus completing the loop.

I won’t bother writing about what I said on the panel, since you can watch the video to find that out. But will you? I wouldn’t; there’s almost nothing more boring than watching a video of a panel or a speaker, even a good one. Something is lost in the medium switch, I think, though I can’t say precisely what it is. These sorts of events are truly experience goods; you really just need to be there. All of which makes one of my points for me. Deborah mentioned not being able to imagine wanting to ever relive an entire year of her life that was captured on some media, but that she could imagine reliving a few choice moments. Which I absolutely agree with. Are you really that interesting? Why would anyone want to relive big chunks of their life, in realtime? Most or at least a lot of what all of us do all day is boring: checking our email, walking to our cars, etc. Of course a panel like this is one of the few choice moments (or at least we panelists hope so). But even that loses something in the translation. I submit that this is why editing was invented: to convert raw footage into something worth watching. I commented on the panel that blogging is inherently exhibitionistic. Umberto Eco points out that pornography is one of the few genres where action is presented in real time. I most definitely do not want to get into a discussion of the merits, or lack thereof, of pornography. But really, why would anyone watch unedited footage of another person’s life? That seems to me about the most boring and gratuitous thing imaginable. Of course, I think I just said that pornography is boring and gratuitous… maybe I need to rethink my metaphors here. Anyway… Can anyone explain to me why anyone would watch justin.tv? Because I seriously don’t get it.