EX-Z3
ƒ/2.6
5.8 mm
1/2

We broke out a wonderful bottle of bubbly with some friends last night. The logo caught my eye… as I have a text blog called The J Curve.

Starting in mid 2004, I blogged on a weekly basis, then bimonthly in 2005, and just twice in 2006. My creativity there has withered, supplanted by a daily photoblog on flickr.

I have wondered why I find it so much easier to post a daily photo than to sculpt prose on any kind of regular basis. For me, the mental hurdle for a daily photo post is so much lower than text. A photo can be a quick snapshot, without much care for quality, and this is immediately apparent to the viewer. You don’t have to waste much time with uninteresting images. With text, if I was to dash off a few sloppy and poorly thought out paragraphs, the reader would have to waste some time to realize that this was a throw-away post, or meant to be tongue-in-cheek. I hold myself to a much higher quality hurdle for linear media – something thoughtful and provocative – and so I procrastinate. Many of my text posts are repurposed material that I wrote for external deadlines (magazines, conferences, congressional testimony), without which I may never had crystallized my disparate thoughts into something coherent.

Maybe I am just a bad writer. It seems so much harder than visual expression.

Anyway, looking back, I think my three favorite blog posts are:
The Dichotomy of Design and Evolution as paths for complex systems development.
• A review of Hawkins’ memory-prediction framework for the brain with a comparison to the future of electronics
Celebrate the Child-Like Mind

6 responses to “The J Curve”

  1. elegant new year’s image — and articulate thoughts, too. the relative "ease" of photography has allowed me to slough off painting, drawing, writing — and even proper capitalization and punctuation. a picture is definitely easier than even 100 words.

  2. Bad writer? lol, I don’t think so…! This is a lovely shot! cheers.

  3. Agreed. I have a similar schpeal… the jist of it is very similar to yours… I think photoblogs are much more appealing because for most people:

    Taking photos is more fun than writing.
    Looking at pictures is more fun than reading.

    I spend my whole day writing and typing for work, the last thing I want to do is sit at my desk and write more. Moreover, when I am sitting at my desk writing, I am missing out on activities which are worth blogging. What I will do, however, is grab the camera and head off looking for adventure!!!

    Have a great New Year… and may the adventures keep coming.

  4. J is known primarily for its bubblies. The also carry a very good russian river pinot.

    You shouldn’t fret about your writing. You are one of the most compulsive chroniclers on Flickr.


    Santojay has subscribed to Jurvetson using http://www.powersnap.com

  5. and 7 years later, upon the signing of the first term sheet for PlanetPlanet Labs Debut

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