Tuesday 27 May 2003

Pic of the day: If only there were two of me ... but I guess we would both want to do the same things at the same time ... (Screenshot The Sims.)

Planning: 2 - Doing: 0

My brain has lately become involved with the idea of a Norwegian Net Diary ("nettdagbok" as it is called in my native tongue). There are a number of them now, although some are blogs. Invariably they are written by younger people - not kids, but young adults - and typically women at that. (Men can still write blogs, though.) It would be interesting to provide some counter-culture (I actually started to write - vulture here) and document another view in the Norwegian language before it disappears.

Yes, I believe the Norwegian language is doomed. In another generation or two, kids will speak English. They already speak it fairly well, having heard it on TV, video and computer games since before they could read subtitles. We are already a bilingual people: In the kiosks, magazines are ordered by topic, not language. Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, British and American computer magazines jostle for the same shelf space. Paperbacks in English are generally cheaper than their Norwegian counterparts, even if they are originally written in Norwegian.

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But this is also the paradox of me writing a "nettdagbok": Since English is so widespread here, the target audience would become those who are too stupid or too lazy or too old to read the Chaos Node. Do I really want to write for that kind of people? Am I even able to write for them?

Actually, I think it could be interesting. My first impulse was to be really condescending (think Magneto in the recent X-men: "Make way for your superiors, chattel!"). But entertaining as that might be, I think I prefer to broaden the customer base by including more local Norwegian commentary.

When I write for the world, I automatically consider the fact that Norway is smaller than many cities around the world, at least in terms of population. (We do have a lot of wilderness here, though, or "nature" as we like to call it. In area, we are like a fairly normal American state.) Things that interest a Norwegian may be boring to the rest of the world. (And, surprisingly, the other way around. Norwegians tend to think of the world as a backdrop or scenery for Norway to positively contrast. )

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So how will the Norwegian diary influence the Chaos Node? Will it be less frequent? No way. Will it be less verbose? Probably, and hopefully. Will it be less thoughtful? Sometimes less, sometimes more, I expect. More fluff will probably be channeled to the Norwegian diary (as per my estimate of my estimated readers), which may lead to a higher percentage of high-brow stuff here. On the other hand, the day has no more hours than before, and I still have my other interests, so there will be less time left for the Chaos Node. Also I guess I will be less ethnocentric here. Things that mostly interest Norwegian readers should appear in the other journal.

My nettdagbok (tentatively called Rare Mannen – the Weird Man) will not be daily. It will probably have a bloglike format, with text piled on top of text. Ugly, but it reduces the temptation to write and write and write until the page is full!