Serendipity, Greek Mythological Edition
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Serendipity (…finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for…M-W.com), is something my fellow fellow Ethan Zuckerman has been talking and writing about for a while. The new/old/hybrid media definition is something like this: A media thingamajig (newspaper, radio/tv program, magazine, podcast, website, blog, etc. etc.) that tells me something:
I never would have looked up in any search engine
unrelated to any topic I would put in any aggregator
no one I know would have tagged, emailed, or blogged…you get the idea.
Serendipity sighting yesterday — Morning Edition on WGBH, Garrison Keillor on the Writer’s Almanac read me a terrific poem by a poet I’d never heard of: “Vex Me” by Barbara Hamby. Personal serendipity squared — hearing my own name in the poem:
…Rebuke me,
rip out my larynx like a lazy snake and feed it to the voiceless
throng. For I am midnight’s girl, scouring unlit streets
like Persephone stalking her swarthy lord…
[note to developers – wouldn’t it be nice if were as easy to cut and paste the audio snippet here too?]
Sign me up for the Serendipity Preservation Society, Ethan. Persephone
- previous:
- YOU are the Message
- next:
- It’s on the Internet, it must be true!
