Friday, February 1, 2008

Accidenti! A stroll around The Internet reveals Swiss Ms. is not actually very clever at all

Blogging is admittedly a weird phenomenon. Although I am generally a big fan of technology in theory, I find that there are certain technological things for which I have limited patience. Among these are: small home appliances, digital photos, online accounts, tv remotes, cords, camera accessories, computer updates, and music players.  Oh, and printers. What I mean by "limited patience" is that, once (or if) the extreme amount of activation energy required to start using one of these things is obtained, the working relationship established is fragile at best; it takes very little for me to stop using it and/or throw it across the room. (I think this is the definition of volatile.)  But, to the point, until I stumbled upon this special trove of additional free time in my life, blogs used to be on this list. 

I still can't say that I am sure what I am doing is of any more value than passing notes in class, but I can say that I now get the fascination with blogs. Once you start peering into other people's lives, you start seeing yourself there, if only in the most remote way.  And it's a step toward recording the cultural history that most people generally agree has been lost along the way in our official histories (the inane content notwithstanding). For as much heat as Wikipedia takes, it has done something similar, something important. But more on my fascination with the idea of Wikipedia another time.  Back to the matter at hand.  

So recently I noticed a considerable number of blogs I had come by have "adventure" somewhere in or near their title.  Which led me to search for "Swiss adventure," and to realize that this little Swiss Ms. is just one among many.  

There's the famous Swiss Miss who is a real designer I probably should have known about before I started this blog and there's the Not-So-Swiss-Miss and the Un-Swiss Miss and SwissMissNOT! (are you detecting a trend?).  I won't even go into the number of college students who have blogs about their adventures abroad (even in Lugano) or of expatriated families having every kind of adventure. (Maybe someone should write something about cultural identity and social performance in the travel writing of Americans. Hmm....)

So I'm having some blogger identity problems. One of the downsides, I suppose, to open source cultural history. Perhaps I shall crawl back into the black hole of technological ignorance whence I came. I think it's the most dignified solution.

3 comments:

JulieAnn said...

Oh, Swiss Ms, you'll always be the only Swiss Ms/Miss in my heart.

fi said...

But you are the only one having adventures! And the only one I care to read... actually this is the only non 'crafty' blog on my list for some odd reason!

Lillo said...

I agree with fi. I don't want to read anyone else's adventures. Just yours!