alex t. hunley

Last week I finally obtained an invitation to Google Wave, the new wünderapp that is being heralded as the Next Big Thing in online communication. Some of this hype is a result of the relative exclusivity of this “preview” period, I think. People want what they can’t have, and when they can’t have it, they tend to overestimate just how much they’re missing. Or so my theory goes.

Of course, I’m certainly not immune to this kind of tech-lust, and I’ve been pestering everyone I know with an Internet connection for an invite for a month. (Sorry about that, friends.) And, I’ll admit, the article that really got me tech-lusting after this particular app was entitled, Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D.

So now that I have it, now that I’ve breached the castle wall, or stormed the dungeon and slain the bugbears, so to speak, is Wave everything I wanted it to be? In short, given the present tense of that query, I have to say: Um, I don’t know…Maybe? But that’s really an unfair standard of judgment, and a good illustration of the peril of hyperbole and expectation. So, if I judge Wave based on its potential, on the concept of Wave, I have to say that I am every bit as enthusiastic about its prospects. Actually, quite a bit more so.

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One salutary effect of the freelance lifestyle is the opportunity to learn new things in the course of one’s day. This isn’t to say that, if I had an office job or somesuch, I wouldn’t be learning. I hold firmly with the idea learning is to humans what growth is to flora, and that when one does not learn, one dies. The other metaphor that springs to mind is that old saw about sharks needing always to keep moving, lest they die of suffocation.

In any event, my point is simply that having the benefit of a non-linear work schedule, I am able to offer stretches of concerted attention to learning things that are a.) interesting to me, and b.) possibly useful, in a “usable job skills” kind of way.

The occasion for this musing is the time I’ve recently spent delving into an old interest I have in computer programming. It’s one of my most inveterate interests, right up there with wanting to write epic fantasy novels. Both of them also scored me tons of babes in high school, I assure you. So I’ve been tinkering with some C code, getting reacquainted with gcc, and figuring out what all this Objective-C adds to the language. It is, at the same time, completely different from the quotidian uses I’ve had for my computer in the last few years and mostly continuous with these uses. Even more interesting, I see this learning as merging smoothly with some of my larger interests, including those in philosophy and education.

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Alright, here we go.

I’ve not written much on the Internet under my own – that is, my “real” – name. I enjoy how the digital realm lets one detach one’s words from one’s flesh. It’s liberating in a way.

But I’m also a writer who yearns for engagement. And the aforementioned detachment is the breeding ground, I think, for the possibility insincerity. For irony and institutional snark. And I want to be post-ironic.

On top of wanting engagement, I now also write as a day-job. It’s almost as if, stepping out from the shade of the dark hours, I now wish to dance in the sunlight. Or something like that.

In any event, I’ve built this site as a dynamic portfolio of sorts. It’s not fully fleshed out yet, but please bear with me. It is, like a healthy life, always a work in progress.