Loud

After waffling on about the subject for ages, I’ve started a new blog, Humane Economics, where I plan to make up for some of the deficiencies of this blog and all of my earlier efforts of writing for the web.

I’ve been using computers as writing tools ever since I was ten years old, when I taught myself how to use WordPerfect for DOS on my mother’s archaic behemoth of a computer.

Since then I’ve been an intellectual child of the digital creative process. I’ve written, thought and created almost exclusively on the computer since then.

That began to change about five years ago, slowly at first, just a few experiments in black and white film development, but three years ago when I began the process of recovering from the depression I’d dug myself into while finishing my PhD, I discovered that I had developed with myself a slight distaste of all things digital.¹

So, one of the most helpful things in recovering from my academia-induced funk was rediscovering the joy of reading real books (as opposed to web pages and on-screen PDF papers and essays) and discovering, for the first time, the emotional clarity of writing longhand.

For about three years, almost all of the writing I do for myself, to help myself think, clarify my ideas or just for the joy of it, has been done with pen and paper and never typed up into the computer.

Most of it is rubbish, of course, but it’s rubbish I enjoyed writing more than the posts on this blog or on my twitter account which are ‘original’ digital writing.

Humane Economics is a twofold experiment. It is an attempt to explore a more humane side of the economics of online publishing, development and activity, but it’s also an attempt on my part to write in the way I prefer, enjoy and love.

All the posts are written first with pen and paper and then typed up, edited and corrected for online publishing. I’ve done this with several posts now, which I’ve queued up for publishing over the next few days, and I have to say that it’s the most fun I’ve ever had blogging.

I had planned to launch the site last week (hence the week old date on the introductory post) but with my laptop out of commission for a few days, postponing the launch was unavoidable.

Please do let me know what you think. I’d really appreciate feedback on the writing style, web design (both here and on Humane Economics) and the subject matter. Is the design readable? Is the writing clear? Is the writing boring? Do you think the subject matter and angle are interesting enough to warrant a blog?

Curious minds want to know and would be glad to find out. So please leave a comment or send me a tweet on twitter or an e-mail.

P.S. This here blog post was also drafted first in longhand.