Blog Naming

My subconscious never runs out of ways that I can hide. A large part of my cyber-phobia is stage fright. After blindfolding myself, I have set out to speak to an audience that extends to infinity on all sides.

The first name I chose for this site was “humchum”, which, after a while, started to suggest to me background nonsense noise or flan pudding. Was this to keep people from finding me?

I logged on to two of my favorite sites, Smoking Gun (http://www.thesmokinggun.com) and the Drudge Report (http://www.drudgereport.com). Both have edgy names, and each has a mission. Missions aim to address issues and solve problems. Missions are born as obsessions.

What is your obsession? I believe you won’t have to look far. What do you think about most of the time, when there are all kinds of other activities you’d rather put your heart into?

For me, one of the most difficult things about solving a problem is to define it and put it into words. I’d been describing myself as a techno-retard, a chortle thrown in to soften the remark.

But inside I was not laughing. When did that technological-revolution bus take off? Why did I miss it? I hired my tech tutor, and we started with what I considered essentials. By the time I decided to launch a blog, I considered myself fairly competent when using the computer technology that I needed: laptop, word processing, and digital visuals.

So right now my problem isn’t fear of computer technology in general, but rather of cyberspace in particular — of glitches, of crashes, of committing an unforgettable, unpardonable breach of cyber-etiquette, and of identity theft.

So I changed my blog’s name from “Humchum” to “Cyber-phobe Diaries.” (My tech tutor suggested that I hypenate "cyberphobe" so that it would be easier to read.) My blog's mission is to share my journey into cyberspace and, I hope, to unravel a few of the Internet’s mysteries.