What’s this, and why now?

Like many a blogger, I’ll start with something that’s part explanation, part self-justification, part hubris, and part trying to prove that I’m not driven by hubris in deciding that I should publish some of my thoughts to the world.

I came relatively late to a love of politics and history. My education was in math and physics and my career is in computers. But as I become increasingly aware of the wider world around me, I find the quirky but partially predictable ways in which people, countries, cultures and societies evolve and interact to be more fundamentally interesting than “technical” subjects.

My choice to start blogging at this particular time is mostly for personal and practical reasons (having reached the point where I’m interested in getting wider feedback on my ideas, coinciding with how easy it is to blog now) but also for reasons having to do with the state of the world and certain ideas that I have that I think might make a difference. I am well aware of my hubris here — though I think it relatively harmless as hubris goes.

Starting to delve into content, one important piece of my current perspective (not necessarily the most important one, but one that’s on my mind at the moment) is that the events of the last few years, particularly relating to the relationships between the “public” in various countries and the and governments of other countries, have highlighted a big change in the role of pragmatism in politics, and in political communication in particular. The need to balance pragmatism and ideology is nothing new, but the speed with which a stance or assertion intended as “pragmatic” may be exposed as inauthentic or deceitful is remarkably fast, creating a new dynamic in which credibility is an increasingly valuable currency, but one that is widely mismanaged.

Unlike this post, most of my posts will relate to specific current events.

Your comments are encouraged.