The Boidem has tried to make meaningful observations about the internet, digitality and hypertext, and to have fun while doing so. I admit that if it has succeeded in doing this, it's continually been a precarious balancing act. Often I've felt myself teetering, and almost falling over into making wild observations not because they make sense, but because they have a nice ring to them. This precariousness isn't new. In the Boidem's sixth birthday column I dealt with my fear that play might overtake content:
But what if hypertext, fun as it may be, is only that - fun. What if when it comes to actually examining an issue it's nothing more than an excuse for not thinking things through?Acknowledging that fear relatively early in the Boidem's existence, however, didn't necessarily mean that I'd change my ways. In the tenth birthday column - a column devoted to the playful aspects of these columns - I noted that:
I derive the same sort of enjoyment from linking one perhaps improbable idea to yet another and yet another, as some people derive from building a house of cards, adding yet another story to the structure without having the entire edifice fall apart. When I succeed in pulling that sort of thing off, I'm happy.But at some point what starts out as an enjoyable exercise in recursiveness can turn into a highly unproductive woozle chase.