2016-02-09»
Sick beats… paper? scissors?»Still incoherently poorly. I ended up trying to just poke some old emails, since I knew I’d be too lightheaded to feel entirely guilty at not replying to them, even though I should be.
I think the only meta-thought I had was about why this blog is so consistently retrospective, when I don’t believe I mull over the past that much. I certainly feel a little embarrassed talking about the past to other people: but perhaps that means that I think about it a lot, but it gets blocked at the level of action, so I don’t receive any feedback about it?
I’d much rather think about the unconstrained future! Or the promising present.
Well, one of those ancient emails is still relevant. Bobbie Johnson sent out a mail at the start of Ghost Boat, Medium’s investigative journalism project to discover what happened to 243 people who were supposed to travel from Libya to Italy in a refugee boat — but who disappeared. It’s still ticking along, driven by the momentum of its team, and their audience, who continue to eke out new leads.
There’s something in this, and Serial, and many of the Patreon projects I see, where a research project is drawn forward by its own supporters. A set of works that would normally be constrained by time (because periodicals don’t just pay for one story, and people usually need to move on in their lives), that are now stretching, becoming people’s sole pursuit. It’s not unusual: plenty of people work at one thing for a large period of their lives. But it’s a new way of creating that venture. Is it any more or less predictable or stable than other long-term sources of resources or minor income? Does it lead to a different pattern of investment? Different projects selected?