It has now been over 13 years since I started posting various activities and announcements on this website, which across time has turned into a kind of digital portfolio. It is hard to believe, but according to statistics from the host Blogger, by mid-Autumn I am projected to have had a total of over 250,000 visitors to Sociomusicology. Those numbers are much larger than I would have ever expected, but some of the traffic might be "bots" rather than real live humans.
The very first post on Sociomusicology was about visiting Kyoto, Japan, in 2007 to complete research for my first book, while working as a young Assistant Professor at Boston University. As I would later write, just a few months afterward, it was a pleasure to have such activities as playing trumpet in Boston for Honkfest with Charlie Keil and Reebee Garofalo, and with bluesman Lou Pride in Victor Coelho’s great band. I was also excited about the work of my doctoral students, as well as the landmark Tanglewood-II symposium, but by the end of the year I left for a new job as a full professor in Finland, and eventually ended up in Norway.
Since 2007, there have been so many developments and activities that I could never have imagined. Those who have done any online writing in a blog, or related medium, will know that it can be difficult to decide what to write (and what to leave out), and inevitably issues arise across years in one’s older posts, such as broken links, formatting changes, and images that are no longer online. Meanwhile, the technology keeps evolving, especially across more than a decade. With time, I have gradually started to include more videos and photos, but never felt the need to have much interactivity built into the site. I figured that if people were curious about something they read, they could always just send me an email, and indeed, there have been many messages from strangers. I regret that sometimes I have been so busy that it has taken a while to reply.
Today most online activity is centered on proprietary social media that emphasize instant interaction and enable “big data” analytics for targeted advertising and surveillance: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Nevertheless, I think it still remains useful to maintain a site with one’s own content, something to link to with relative autonomy, so Sociomusicology will probably keep going for a while longer.
Displayed above are various systems that humans use to represent numbers, as well as a bit of time-lapse photography taken a few days ago from beside my home as mist was drifting across the lake.
The very first post on Sociomusicology was about visiting Kyoto, Japan, in 2007 to complete research for my first book, while working as a young Assistant Professor at Boston University. As I would later write, just a few months afterward, it was a pleasure to have such activities as playing trumpet in Boston for Honkfest with Charlie Keil and Reebee Garofalo, and with bluesman Lou Pride in Victor Coelho’s great band. I was also excited about the work of my doctoral students, as well as the landmark Tanglewood-II symposium, but by the end of the year I left for a new job as a full professor in Finland, and eventually ended up in Norway.
Since 2007, there have been so many developments and activities that I could never have imagined. Those who have done any online writing in a blog, or related medium, will know that it can be difficult to decide what to write (and what to leave out), and inevitably issues arise across years in one’s older posts, such as broken links, formatting changes, and images that are no longer online. Meanwhile, the technology keeps evolving, especially across more than a decade. With time, I have gradually started to include more videos and photos, but never felt the need to have much interactivity built into the site. I figured that if people were curious about something they read, they could always just send me an email, and indeed, there have been many messages from strangers. I regret that sometimes I have been so busy that it has taken a while to reply.
Today most online activity is centered on proprietary social media that emphasize instant interaction and enable “big data” analytics for targeted advertising and surveillance: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Nevertheless, I think it still remains useful to maintain a site with one’s own content, something to link to with relative autonomy, so Sociomusicology will probably keep going for a while longer.
Displayed above are various systems that humans use to represent numbers, as well as a bit of time-lapse photography taken a few days ago from beside my home as mist was drifting across the lake.
No comments:
Post a Comment