Musings on nerdy stuff.

I’ve decided that I need to increase my involvement, and in turn my interest, in Internet research stuff if I’m to get through the next two years without throwing a massive hissy fit and disappearing off the face of the Earth, like the 6% of PhD students who apparently just disappear, never to be seen again (no, I don’t have a reference to back up that stat. I heard something along those lines from a friend). I feel like I’m in this position where I know more about Internet culture than the average person, but I’m not really as clued up as I should be given that I’m an Internet researcher. I guess there are a few reasons behind this. I don’t read many Internet research blogs. I should, but I don’t. I haven’t found many that I can maintain an interest in. I’d really like to be proven wrong on this point!

I also probably haven’t done enough general reading on nerdy things that interest me, which aren’t directly related to my thesis topic. If I’m to be completely honest, I probably didn’t choose the right topic. There’s heaps of geeky Internet fun stuff that interests me, but instead I chose to discuss blogging (why?!), and I find myself slightly panicked that I’m going to forever be stuck researching blogs, should I end up continuing along this career path. But at least writing my thesis on a topic that I don’t love means that there’s still heaps of stuff out there that does interest me, right??

As much as I love blogging, I’m pretty sure that researching it for the rest of time would drive me insane and destroy any enthusiasm for the Internet that I could ever have.

So what do I do? I feel so out of the loop. I guess I want to read about topics not limited to the Internet. I love game culture, despite my completely noobish lack of ability when it comes to actually playing them. I love thinking about the way that people interact in various online fora (though I don’t really enjoy thinking about social networking all that much). I’m also really interested in the idea of integrated technology (forgive me if I have no idea what I’m saying right now), and the relationships between our bodies and our day-to-day lives, and future technology. How will we interact with machines and networks? How will they interact with us? Not old-hat, cyborgy stuff, but rather the way that technology actually is evolving as integrated and omnipresent.

When I have a spare few moments, I’m going to scour the blogrolls of the few net research blogs that I subscribe to, and I’m going to try find a few blogs that really interest me beyond the scope of my current official research. If I trusted my time management skills a little more (or more correctly, if I had time management skills), I’d even throw a few articles, and perhaps a book or two, in to the mix.

Blogging, I love you, but you’re bringing me down.