Slow information

(Originally written as a comment at http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/10/slow-capital.html)

I am a slowblogger. I tend to know about a news later, and tend to make my opinion about it much later after the stormy initial debates have gone, when the topic has been outdated. Even at AVC.com, I find myself leaving comments days after.

But why do fast blogging/twitting dominate?

One reason is that the world is becoming more complex and moving faster, and the average shelf life of information has to become shorter. There are more and more new information, and a piece of information gets outdated after even newer information arrives. This is natural.

So, this explains all why we don't see much slow information (generation, distribution, discussion)? Probably not. There are topics that deserve longer thinking and discussing. I think the other reason must be that we made it easier and cooler for fast information.

Blogging has made information faster. With Twitter, even blogging looks slow now. Average shelf life probably being 1-2 hours vs. 1-2 days. All the marketing and journalism encourage you to join the wave. So we get rapid progress in the fast side of the information, which is good. But the other side, the slow, is left undeveloped. The fast information is likely be more popular as the world, which is the ultimate source of information speeds up, but not this much.

The ebook is showing some hope, but it has not fully utilized the advantage of the Internet. It is just substituting the tree paper with the electrononic paper, an old model using new technology. I am not saying old models are bad, but there must be other new possibilities.

More than any other areas, we need innovation for slow information.

In response to Will Prices's "Lost My Voice"

(This is a comment that I made on Will Price's recent blog post http://willprice.blogspot.com/2008/04/lost-my-voice.html)

I would rather think that you should feel free to promote your company in your blog. What needs more caution is when you write about other topics, including what you learned from your management experiences.

In this age of personal broadcasting tools, people broadcast even what needs to be communicated silently between individuals. The world will eventually find new ethics, but right now people seem overshooting. It's not different here in Korea. A politician recently said, "Stop talking to a microphone. Let's meet."

Re(?)starting this blog

It seems that I opened this blog on May 26th, 2003, as I have a post as of that date. But I have not done anything with it ever since then. I have done some writing and blogging (mostly with my company blog), but not with this one.

Now, I would like to start blogging with this in English. I like the idea of being part of broader and more diverse global community, which means better chance of engaging in exchange of interesting ideas and viewpoints. Also, as I have some web application projects that are (hopefully) for anyone in the world, I thought I needed a communication channel with which to have conversations with people on the net.

I am amazed at people, except full-time bloggers, who post several times a week, not to mention who post more than once everyday. I don't think I can do that, except for when I am very inspired or angry. I am also amazed by the pace of an issue rising and falling. I also like to talk about current topics, but I usually need some time to think (and to have the courage to publish in English) to express my thought on that. So, I may often respond to someone's thought after most people left the issue already.

Enough introduction and time to start blogging. Welcome to my blog!