Au revoir, mes amis de boingboing

Ed Note: one of Boingboing's three current guest bloggers, Steven Johnson is the author of six books, most recently The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth Of America. (You can see a video interview introducing the book here.) He's also the co-founder of the hyperlocal community site outside.in.

The two most common--and frustrating--complaints I hear about the web and the blogosphere are 1) that they're filled with mean-spirited snark; and 2) that they've been divided up into predictable, Daily Me filters where you're only told stuff you already know. I've been hearing this for years, and every time I hear it I respond by pointing people to the success of boingboing, which I think most of us would agree is as true to the core values of the web as anything out here. First, our hosts are so generous and open--and largely snark-free--in just about everything they post. The default tone is here is always: "Hey, check out this amazing thing I found." And those things are far more eclectic and diverse than anything you would have encountered in the heyday of big media. Only at boingboing could a guy post about Candy Land, aviation safety, Lost, and the Obama IT plan in one week and feel like he's the boring, predictable one. If this turns out to be what the DailyMe looks like, I think we're all going to be just fine.

So it was an honor and a complete blast to hang out here for the past two weeks. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured by any of my posts. I hope you'll get a chance to check out The Invention of Air, but either way I look forward to continuing the conversation here and elsewhere.

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

TJ S

Is it just me, or are these 2-week periods going by at an accellerating rate?

I feel like I’m losing touch with time :(
SC_Wolf

What, another round of staffer layoffs?
buddy66

Merci, M. Johnson. Entirely our pleasure.
Ian Holmes

thanks for the interesting articles, Steven…
Takuan

go forth and carry my gametes (what?… they didn’t TELL you? … oh…. if you get a rash, don’t scratch!) Best of luck!
David Pescovitz

Steven, we were thrilled and honored to have you around! Thank you so much.
eustace

It was fun, so don’t be a stranger!
philoponia

Thank you!
MikeMoore

my pleasure, it was a treat reading your posts! thank you!
markmarkmark

Loved the lost article. seriously.
http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/EdenLantis