information gateway

I just returned from a thoroughly enjoyable night out with an old friend. He is currently partway through his masters degree at a top American engineering college and he spent the entire evening preaching the virtues of information on the internet and the need to manage it. He also lamented the lack of internet awareness among Singaporeans in general.

I used to think I was an information junkie. I mean, I read the NYTimes, CNN, BBC, and IHT in addition to the Straits Times. And that doesn't even count my niche news sources, periodicals and blogs. In fact, it got so bad that I would just get glued to the internet reading the same headline news from different sources. Finally, I came to the conclusion that current affairs knowledge is too transient to waste so much time on, and that was when I switched to reading books.

However, when I compare my reading habits to his, I may as well be reading comic books. This guys reads with purpose. I've since obtained a long list of his favorite news feeds from popular sites such as slashdot to others I had never heard of such as the Internet Archive, which you can refer to the next time you encounter a broken link. (Hmm, I wonder if this works for articles that STI has archived; interesting how two usages of the word have such different implications for their availability) It was really great hanging out but he was making me itch to get online again, so I suggested we go home so that I could configure my Bloglines to ensure I was getting the maximum utility from it.

We also discussed blogging, and Tomorrow.sg. We're both pretty disappointed with the general quality and especially the downhill trend that the recent postings have followed, especially when compared to BoingBoing which it is supposedly modelled after, which I had only just started reading. It seems that Tomorrow.sg has no purpose, no structure, no quality control and no quality in general. Clearly it is intended to cater to a mainstream that I do not fall under, but I see no reason why they cannot use categorisation to implement some market segmentation and appeal to a wider audience. Can it be that there are so few thoughtful bloggers in Singapore that one is better off just reading the good ones through RSS feeds? Will blogs ever provide a sufficiently reliable source of opinion or news to balance the mainstream media? So we spent an hour lamenting the Singapore blogging scene. It was ironic because we were sitting in Hideout, citadel of Singapore blogging. (I don't like this new Hideout management and their choice of music.)

Added later: If you came visiting from Tomorrow.sg, you might want to read a more thoughtful and objective treatment of this subject here.

After this evening, I'll never look at the internet in the same way again. I've been hovering around the information gateway for too long, it's time to take a step through it.