Fifteen Years Today!

Hard to believe it was fifteen years ago this day that I first began typing my extraneous thoughts into blog posts. It's been quite a journey! In the time since I began, I've published a great many philosophy books that began as posts here on Only a Game. Alas, I have also watched discussion on the blog fall from its peak as a lively forum for exchange of ideas to the current wasteland of comments where a month where I get more than one short comment is exceptional.

So I frequently ask myself: why continue?

The answer is that I have to write, and it feels right that I should share those writings publicly, where at least the possibility exists for discussion. I do long for more discourse and less narrowcast, but it is clear that the golden age of blogging is over, and while I am still a member of the Republic of Bloggers, the exchange of blog-letters is a rare event - although always cherished. My especial love and gratitude to Chris Billows and Jed Pressgrove for their exchanges with me, which have been of inestimable value.

Sometimes it is suggested that I move to Medium. I am wary. I cannot move my blog to a place that is not my own, and the prevailing quality of all social media is that the content is at the mercy of the mob. I have not ruled it out, but the weight of fifteen years of practice keeps me to doing it the way I always have. And I am sceptical that changing platform will resolve the problem with discourse, since the problems with discourse is the core the problem of the early twenty first century.

So, what now?

Firstly, I must complete the epic two year project that is A Hundred Cyborgs, which is now just ten cyborgs away from concluding. (I know what most of the final ten will be, but I've no idea what #100 will be!) After that, I intend to go back to freeform blogging for a while, as I have throughout June. I've been enjoying it. It would be nice to be read as well as to write, but to write is still enough for me. I might have a go at rethinking intellectual property law in the spirit of Kant's rethinking of law in the context of morality. I'm also always up for suggested topics, since when someone suggests a topic it means I am about to engage in discourse. And this is the point of the exercise.

Well there be another fifteen years of Only a Game? Let's find out.

A Hundred Cyborgs begins again, for the final time, next week.

Comments

[James McGrath]

Happy blogiversary!

[Chris]

Cheers! Thanks for reading!

[Noumenalrealm]

15 years. May you have another 15.

I've never had time to read blogs anymore. Part of that owes to the fact that I work for 'old media' - print newspapers. I also work for an organisation that works with what used to be called 'new media', and now is just called 'digital'.

I miss the old days of blogging, but the climate has changed so much, even since 2014 when I started working in 'old media', the terminology is out of date to 2020's climate. I think maybe its comparable to how games had moved across generations, but maybe had lost something along the way.

[Chris]

Thanks Michael! Although I doubt I have another 15 years of life left in me at this point... I'll be happy to be proved wrong about this, though! :)

I too greatly miss the old days of blogging, as I'm sure is apparent. But I cannot give up blogging, it is the only thing keeping me sane most weeks. And what is there to replace it...? Nothing. There are new media forms that supplant it, but nothing comes close to doing what blogs could do. I find it quite distressing.

Stay wonderful!

Chris.

[Matt Mower]

Sorry to have missed your anniversary. Congratulations and here's to another 15 years!

(p.s. I have started using an RSS newsreader again after probably 10 years and you are re-subscription number 4!)

[Chris]

Thanks Matt! So glad RSS isn't dead...although when I open my newsreader, it's mostly my blogs that have new content. :(

Chris.