Publish And Be Damned

I have alluded to it in a previous post but isn’t the World Wide Web a wonderful thing…. or is it?

 Everything is so accelerated. I very much doubt that we actually discover anything new about flycasting that hasn’t been discovered, and re discovered, several times over the last hundred years or so, although technology has allowed us to see things that would not have been possible a few years ago. The difference is that instead of writing a letter and receiving a reply a month later and then replying to maybe one or two other correspondents  we can now discuss it and (possibly) come to a conclusion in hours. This is done under public gaze, any one of whom can jump in whenever they like and add their contribution. Whereas, those thinkers pre internet days had to sit and cogitate and ponder to work out their particular theories. Plus, they had to put it down on paper in a way that they hoped the person they were writing to would understand.

 Of course they must have reached conclusions, the difference is it may have taken years and none of us ever got to hear them unless they published a book (come on, be honest, how many of you go and buy a book on fly casting? I don’t) and the book would have to cover all aspects of flycasting not just one little aspect! imagine the amount of letters tooing and froing while the author checks out thisnthat. Now all you have to do is pose a question on a forum and hey presto there’s your answer….or is it?

 I don’t know if it happens in other languages, I hope so,  but written English is a pain in the arse. One word may have two or three different meanings, put another word in front or behind and the meaning can change again. A whole sentence can be open to any number of interpretations, if you are not carefull. I have been pulled up any number of times for my apparent mis-use of one word. In fact some people delight in deliberately mis understanding (is that actually possible?) something I have written. I know this doesn’t just happen to me, I’m not paranoid. So, those people who wrote ‘how to’ books in the past were either very brave, or egocentric, with skins as thick as a rhino. They put into print their own ideas and theories, published, and were damned. They didn’t realise that in a few years they were liable to have bits put up on the web, possibly out of context, to be, sometimes ripped shreds, sometimes defended and, occasionally, rediscovered. 

 Yep, the web is a wonderful thing. Just think, in a couple of hundred years time someone may drag this blog out of the ether and wonder, what the hell has this got to do with fly casting? What is flycasting? Come to that what is a fish?

 Normal service will be resumed soon.