Outsider/Insider | What is uttered from the heart alone, will win the ...

Today is a big day.
My baby is one year old. No, not that baby. He’s nearly four I’m talking of course, about my other baby, Unconsoleable (and here’s her baby picture, before she was adopted by ESN :-))
My adult life has been a series of phases. I had my rudderless phase, where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. Hardly unusual of course. I tried a few things. None of them took. Then I discovered media....

Apparently adulthood is over.
YA fiction, comic book movies, etc. It all apparently points to a state of perpetual childhood that adults are increasingly living in. Or so some people think.
Thankfully, there has been some extremely thoughtful and sober commentary on this. Among my favorites so far are this Salon piece. I emphatically agree with the economic arguments it makes as well, but it was this part which stood out to me for obvious...

This recent article made the case that no one who likes games should want to be called a “gamer,” since the word is associated with all sorts of unpleasantness. To wit:
The term [gaming community] is a miserable legacy of the medium’s niche past, where video games were viewed as the sole preserve of white, western indoors-yteenagers. The cliché has proven indelible. ‘Gamers’ (a term that further segregates ‘players...

This is NOT me. It’s not you either. But some people think this caricature is an accurate depiction of anyone who thinks critically about technology.
Mathew Ingram at GigaOm has recently published a piece entitled Making fun of Silicon Valley is easy, but the next big thing looks like a toy. It bothered me as soon as I read it. Today I saw a few people I generally respect tweeting it and my unease...