Happy New Year
We broke out a wonderful bottle of bubbly with some friends last night, and discovered the official drink of The J Curve....
Starting in mid 2004, I blogged on a weekly basis, then bimonthly in 2005, and just twice in 2006. My creativity here has withered, supplanted by a daily photoblog on flickr.
I have wondered why I find it so much easier to post a daily photo than to sculpt prose on any kind of regular basis. For me, the mental hurdle for a daily photo post is so much lower than text. A photo can be a quick snapshot, without much care for quality, and this is immediately apparent to the viewer. You don't have to waste much time with uninteresting images. With text, if I dash off a few sloppy and poorly thought out paragraphs (like these ones =), the reader has to waste some time to realize that this is a throw-away post, or maybe meant to be tongue-in-cheek. I hold myself to a much higher quality hurdle for linear media — something thoughtful and provocative — and so I procrastinate. Many of my text posts are repurposed material that I wrote for external deadlines (magazines, conferences, congressional testimony), without which I may never had crystallized my disparate thoughts into something coherent.
Anyway, here are my 30 favorite photos and my best shot of 2006. Cheers!
Starting in mid 2004, I blogged on a weekly basis, then bimonthly in 2005, and just twice in 2006. My creativity here has withered, supplanted by a daily photoblog on flickr.
I have wondered why I find it so much easier to post a daily photo than to sculpt prose on any kind of regular basis. For me, the mental hurdle for a daily photo post is so much lower than text. A photo can be a quick snapshot, without much care for quality, and this is immediately apparent to the viewer. You don't have to waste much time with uninteresting images. With text, if I dash off a few sloppy and poorly thought out paragraphs (like these ones =), the reader has to waste some time to realize that this is a throw-away post, or maybe meant to be tongue-in-cheek. I hold myself to a much higher quality hurdle for linear media — something thoughtful and provocative — and so I procrastinate. Many of my text posts are repurposed material that I wrote for external deadlines (magazines, conferences, congressional testimony), without which I may never had crystallized my disparate thoughts into something coherent.
Anyway, here are my 30 favorite photos and my best shot of 2006. Cheers!
posted by Steve Jurvetson at
1:19 PM
9 Comments:
As one of the preeminent thought leaders of my generation (GenX), I do hope you will consider posting more blogs (the written word) from time-to-time on items you feel are interesting. As a reader (nay, passive lurker), the process of determining relevance is but a necessary part of the overall process. No time is considered wasted upon an interesting blogger regardless of the subjective determination towards an individual post/blog. Please note that your photo-blogs are aesthetically-pleasing and thought-provoking as well.
Best wishes in the new year.
RR
By
rr, at 8:25 AM
I was going to show your blog design to someone and saw this post. Wanted to say only that I personally believe that your attraction to photoblogging more than to text-blogging I find it not based in their differences per se, because there aren´t so many, but in the sense of effective communinaction you get when you write a blog post in opposition to when you make a flickr post.
Flickr has a sense of community so strong that each time you post something there, whether a pic alone or a pic to illustrate actually a genuine written post (you know we do that from time to time), you know while you are posting that there are people there you can think of in concrete who will see yoru post and reply to it (most likely). You know, when you post that you are actually establishing a dialogue in which you made the openning statement. You suggest a conversation-
Blog posting (I have with you both experiences to talk about) is like a strange monologue in which you seem to be writing to no-one for certain, you cannot "grasp" yoru readers too much... you don´t know who they are, is like sendign a message in a bottle... and that can be somewhat discouraging.
Because above all, I think you use the internet to reach out to others, you need to know beforehand that there is people you can figure, some of us you may consider even friends and even part of your clan... and that is something that Flickr gacve you... and that Orkut until a time also did... yet I personally think that Blogger didn´t. See, you could have used blogger to photoblog and you didn´t! Neither did I with my blog. Another good example in favour of your care for flickr community dynamics: you have become very active in flickr groups -discussions (me, I almost don´t pay attention to them).
I believe that the successful bloggers are those who have found in blogging exactly the same you found in flickr-ing. Effective networking. No-one likes to feel like speaking alone. You want to socialize.
This is my thought... perhaps I am absolutely wrong. I am mostly projecting my experience to what may be yours, and for what I witness your moves, likes and dislikes are from here.
Last: You write very well. I have began to translate works from you time ago and they are GOOD. Perhaps some people (average reader) can´t follow you easily because you talk about very smart stuff. And possibly you perceive this "disconnection" and assume you are responsible for it. And perhaps you feel you communicate better with photographs then, because that "average reader" do understand them, so you feel that you can communicate in a universal language without making an effort or facing resistance. (I believe that you must suffer many times for trying to put things into words to be "easy to read", to let people understand you. That is boring and in the end you get tired of that, and you surely retire to mutism rather than facing having to "translate" your thoughts again and again).
Perhaps another thing about blogger is that you felt you had to post "interesting" things... like you felt like a "stage pressure" because of imagining people's expectations of "what Steve Jurvetson's should blog be like and talk about". While the flickr activity has been more relaxed since the beginning.
Ok, dunno... some thoughts.
ps: Don´t understimate your writing skills. Would be a pity, but most of all totally unfair and a misperception. You are *very* good.
Bye,
G^2
By
Gisela Giardino, at 1:14 PM
The 30 pics are awesome, especially flickr Ball and hawk eye sincerly loved them, thanks...have a grt year of the Pig ahead :)
Steve I wonder if you have seen
http://IndyChai.com
India's first Web 2.0 Hyper Aggregated Portal !
By
Anonymous, at 8:08 AM
Steve J, why no post for last 3 months. Keep thing updated.
Cheer
By
Anonymous, at 11:10 AM
will try to... Been posting every day over here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/
and a bit at GeekDad:
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2007/04/peering_into_th.html
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2007/03/celebrate_the_c.html
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2007/03/you_may_remembe.html
By
Steve Jurvetson, at 11:20 AM
hey there! im kinda new on this venture capital thinggy but i really wanna learn about it. i found one venture capital company on wikipedia named ITU VENTURES. Have you heard of this? Anyone have a take? I learned that Chad Browstein is the founder.
By
Anonymous, at 10:08 AM
That picture with the hawk is scary. Nice timing though!
By
Anonymous, at 11:19 AM
I stopped livejournalling regularly for similar reasons. Text can be edited, photos...generally aren't as inviting to manipulate, even for people like myself who are photoshop gurus.
I know from talking to others on livejournal it's also addicting. Those hooked on the social medium are constantly thinking about what the next blog post is going to be.
Second for me is time. 12-20K posts are pretty typical, which with frequent editing ends up being time consuming.
Sadly in my quest for redundant hardware I managed to drop both the casio pocket cameras in short succession of each other. As much as I like small tech, I sometimes wish cellphone/camera designers didn't make cameras quite so suppository.
So recently I've taken back up art, as I find that in the process of output, I weave the experience at the time into the page...even though nobody but I will see it.
By
Unknown, at 1:18 AM
I enjoyed your photo blog, I believe that some of the intrigue may be that Men are Visual animals and stimulated by images.
By
Anonymous, at 8:11 PM
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