I'm 29, from Canada, and doing my Mathematics MSc at the University of Cape Town.
If the world was fair, I would also have my Philosophy MA from back in Canada by now, but two and a half years (and 12 countries) later, 'final revisions' on the Marx part of my thesis still have to be OK'd by the Marxist faculty member who is now the sole 'guardian of the gate'. Such as it is.
There have been instances in the past where people have recommended to me to write a blog especially because I travel a fair bit, and the 'travelblog' has become fairly popular to keep friends and such updated. To this, I once said that I would never write a blog, simply because the internet has made 'talk' incredibly cheap. One no longer has to have anything of substance to say to get 'published' simply because there is a means to get published for free and (in theory) have what you publish available to billions of people at the drop of a hat.
I suppose this is good and bad for the same reason: since one no longer has to go through the long arduous process of either stumping up the capital required to publish or going through a publishing house that must deem the work profitable, more people can have their 'say', and this gives the opportunity for budding novelists to unearth themselves without having to take a huge chance in terms of time and money. Unfortunately, this also means that there is evermore piles of junk and thoughts of no real substance that accumulate on the internet and must be sifted through in order to unearth any sort of 'gems'.
So why have I done an about-turn now and risked branding myself a major hyprocrite and/or pretentious elitist? Not because I suddenly think that I have a lot of very important things to say, but simply because it has been put to me by a rather dear friend of mine that (and I quote) "If there was a blog about Ludwig Wittgenstein I'd religiously read it every morning with my tea" and I volunteered to 'establish the truth value' of this statement (as Frege would put it). Although I don't intend to write exclusively about Wittgenstein, maybe one or two more philosophy blogs to go with the vast sea of fashion and travel blogs wouldn't be so bad.
Right, Eleni?
If the world was fair, I would also have my Philosophy MA from back in Canada by now, but two and a half years (and 12 countries) later, 'final revisions' on the Marx part of my thesis still have to be OK'd by the Marxist faculty member who is now the sole 'guardian of the gate'. Such as it is.
There have been instances in the past where people have recommended to me to write a blog especially because I travel a fair bit, and the 'travelblog' has become fairly popular to keep friends and such updated. To this, I once said that I would never write a blog, simply because the internet has made 'talk' incredibly cheap. One no longer has to have anything of substance to say to get 'published' simply because there is a means to get published for free and (in theory) have what you publish available to billions of people at the drop of a hat.
I suppose this is good and bad for the same reason: since one no longer has to go through the long arduous process of either stumping up the capital required to publish or going through a publishing house that must deem the work profitable, more people can have their 'say', and this gives the opportunity for budding novelists to unearth themselves without having to take a huge chance in terms of time and money. Unfortunately, this also means that there is evermore piles of junk and thoughts of no real substance that accumulate on the internet and must be sifted through in order to unearth any sort of 'gems'.
So why have I done an about-turn now and risked branding myself a major hyprocrite and/or pretentious elitist? Not because I suddenly think that I have a lot of very important things to say, but simply because it has been put to me by a rather dear friend of mine that (and I quote) "If there was a blog about Ludwig Wittgenstein I'd religiously read it every morning with my tea" and I volunteered to 'establish the truth value' of this statement (as Frege would put it). Although I don't intend to write exclusively about Wittgenstein, maybe one or two more philosophy blogs to go with the vast sea of fashion and travel blogs wouldn't be so bad.
Right, Eleni?
This is wonderful. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI'll try my best not to make it too turgid.
ReplyDelete