My Naked Tail is Lisping through the gap

Yesterday I finished reading Naked Conversations (disclaimer: Amazon associate). Thanks again to Randy Charles Morin for sending me this book. It filled in a lot of gaps for me. Even though Robert and Shel may not have covered all sides of the story with equal sympathy, I think their main point is indisputable: blogging and related technologies are changing communications radically, by making them two-way and almost immediate. This has and will impact corporate and social cultures in unexpected and potentially revolutionary ways. For one thing, companies will be expected to listen to their users and respond quickly and frankly. Too bad not everyone sees that yet.

When I started this blog in January, I stated that I wanted to “gain some insights into how blogging reflects and impacts the rest of life.” The only comments I ever received on that post were tons and tons of spam. Nevertheless, I caught the blogging bug. The act of pouring your honest thoughts into an RSS feed for the world to see has a liberating and invigorating effect — especially when you find that someone actually enjoys reading them! Conversations with commenters and fellow bloggers open my eyes to so much more information and different viewpoints than I could have ever found out about in books, magazines, newspapers, or even search engines. Naked Conversations helps to explain how all that works.

While I await the arrival of The Long Tail (thanks again, Randy!), I’ve decided to re-read the essays on Lisp from Metamagical Themas, by Douglas Hofstadter. I first read this book back in 1989, and although the entire collection fascinated me, I remember being especially charmed by the Lisp chapters. With the recently accelerated adoption of languages that owe homage to Lisp (especially Ruby), I’m hoping this text will prove enlightening once more. I’ve downloaded Ufasoft Common Lisp so I can sing along with the examples.