RogerEvansOnline.com

You’re not just readers anymore.

One of the exciting things about cyberspace and the culture it enables is that Things Keep Changing. The changes are, with remarkable frequency, for the better. And, by the very nature of the new media, it’s easy to change with them.

When I began this site back in January, I took good, sober advice that recommended not having promiscuous commentary posted from the readership. Control was thus enhanced. But control (contrary to what some political philosophers will try to tell you) is not one of the higher virtues. Participation and mutuality, while not necessarily as tidy, can be much more generating of ideas and have great potential for bringing raw thought to greater refinement. If two heads are better than one, how much better all of yours together?

After eight months of this site, and plenty — plenty — of good comments from you, whether by e-mail or chance encounters on the street, in restaurants, or at those musical events so many of us resort to, I’ve grown to covet your ad libitum discussions here. Right here. It will cut down so much on travel costs to gather your comments and, besides, will make you beneficiaries of each other’s insights instead of my keeping them all for myself.

So think of RogerEvansOnline as a sort of digital Liberty Hall (my friends who run the Data Lounge already having taken the best name possible). But, like any home of liberty that wants to retain its freedom, R.E.O. will endeavor to retain its character of entirely positive advocacy of arts and letters. Personal attacks will of course meet with the extinction made so easy in cyberspace. It will be as though they had never been. (It’s hard to believe we ever settled for Wite-Out, a feeble attempt at cosmetic obliteration in comparison.) But I trust that recent months here, with all their gratifying reaction from thoughtful people of edifying aims, will have led to a site that will cause people to look elsewhere for that sort of thing anyway, so you who do come are just the thinkers whose comments the site and its readers are most likely to value.

So comment away!

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To comment, simply click on the title of the post in question to find the handy form that will receive your words.

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UPDATE: So it turns out that you weren’t as eager to comment as I thought. The dynamics of new media are never as predictable as we often assume. I’ll keep the comment facility up for a while longer, however, since I had been under the impression that it was much desired by some.