As things presently stand, this will be the last Boidem column. At least that's my intent. Truth be told, it would have been accurate to assume that the previous last column, from eight years ago, was the last one - if for no other reason than nothing has been written (well, at least not posted) here since that column of eight years ago. But since that column didn't officially announce that I was closing shop on this project, formally doing so seems called for, and this seems to be the proper date for doing that.
I suppose that pretty much by definition a final column isn't a festive column, but it's clearly not a memorial. I'm not mourning the end of the Boidem. I'm basically acknowledging that it's run its course. It's a good guess that for any readers who might encounter this column it's an unexpected surprise. Though I've been planning it in my head, and have collected numerous, and probably too many, notes, for quite a while, for any readers it might have, it's probably appearing out of the blue. I doubt that anyone is asking him/herself whatever happened to The Boidem, but for me it simply seemed to be the right thing to do, and the possibility of a Sergeant Pepper related title served as a welcome catalyst, getting me to sit down and actually write.
Obviously a great deal has changed in the eight years since that previous/last Boidem column, and of course even more has changed over the thirty years since the first. As I constructed this column it wasn't really clear to me if my intent was to reflect on the last eight years, or on the entire thirty. It is, however, clear that this "summing up" column is devoted to examining what some of those changes have been, and how they've affected how I view this technology that thirty years ago was highly terra incognita and today has become an integral part of what we used to refer to as "real life" as opposed to something that merited being compared to that. Throughout this column I've tried to explain why it makes sense to close this project - neither with a bang nor a whimper (or simply let it disappear), but instead just with a bit of closure. For any readers who don't want to read until the end I offer here a rather simple tl;dr explanation: From their inception these columns attempted to examine something that was new and, believe it or not, strange. They tried to do this by identifying the ways that our new online lives were different than what we experienced before the internet, but also by glimpsing beneath the fashion to question whether, other than our external dress, things had primarily stayed the same. Today, when our online experiences are fully integrated into our lives it seems that there's hardly anything left to examine.
Is a final column really necessary? I doubt that any of my proverbial eight readers has devoted much of his or her time pondering whatever happened to the Boidem. And if this closure is necessary, or at least permissible, couldn't I just say that I enjoyed writing these columns, that it was a pleasurable experience and that it's simply time to close up shop? Other than perhaps to prove to myself, or at least remind myself, that I still know how to construct a column like this, is there really a point to all this? The problem became that once I started collecting materials for this column I found it almost impossible to stop. One idea led to a link that demanded another link, and ... oh, what about this, and don't forget this! The links started coming at well beyond a petty pace. I'd found my linking sweet spot.
So have I created a situation in which my own personal reviewing of The Boidem has simply been made into a burden for any of my readers who might try to get to the end of at least this column? I hope not, though I'm not really sure. It would make sense to end this final column with a favorite I've acknowledged before (both in that previous "last" column, and also considerably earlier), or simply by riding off into the sunset. But paradoxically, as I collected materials for this column and started organizing and giving them shape I felt myself getting into my stride. I was enjoying the freedom of thinking of tangential links, of following where my associations led me. I even found myself toying with the idea of reigniting The Boidem. But even as I tried to make this column reflective, even retrospective, I found myself questioning how things are today. Numerous ideas and concepts mentioned here seemed to merit, even request, further examination - hinting that there's still a place for The Boidem within the vast quantity of internet related commentary that fills the web (if it still has any place for interesting things amid all the advertisements). But this seems to be the right time to let someone else do the examining.
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