Virginia Postrel wonders in her intelligent way about the “what and the “why of blogging. Clearly, blogging is a medium still searching for its message. What is blogging for, how does it contribute to other forms of discourse, and, especially, how does it serve as a place of idea generation?
Virginia is concerned that there is a certain “hit and run quality to the exercise that fails to “deepen the bloggers own thinking on the topic at hand. Bloggers are, to shift the metaphor, in danger of remaining the short order cooks of the intellectual world.
Let me begin by acknowledging the problem. Its a problem. Blogging taxes me the way a particular university Dean used to do. It interrupts just enough each day to prevent certain kinds of intellectual activity.
But the risk of blowing my own horn, I think I have a way of solving this problem.
My head works a little like a lazy susan. I never know what topic will catch my attention, but I have noticed that there is, finally, a limited set of topics that do. Something in Virginias blog, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times spins the lazy susan each day and, before I know it, I am working on one of my defacto themes.
One of these themes turns out to be the interaction of culture and commerce. One of the subthemes turns out to be creativity. Over the 300 posts or so, I have accumulated several that address creativity. Each was written with a distant memory of the last one. Each looks forward in a vague sort of way to the next. But they are, finally, ideas on their own, so many bottles in the stream.
The good news is that there is an unsuspected mutuality here. When I look at the posts all at once, I am interested to see that while I repeat my themes, I dont repeat my approach to them. As a result, the posts end up piecing together a multi-dimensional view, I would not managed were I to treat the topic head-on and all-at-once. Yes, things overlap, but they do so in that interesting post-modern way where one image is made out of many images. This is, in short, a good way to think. It may be a better way to think than head-on and all-at-once contemplation.
The posts we write over several years could be seen as so many pylons peeking out of Long Island Sound. Eventually we wonder if we couldnt fashion a wharf out of these. Hey, this could be the beginnings of one of those pocket yacht clubs that run up and down the Sound. Several hundred members. Small to middling sail boats and kayaks. A small community of people who want to moor here, even as they take advantage of reciprocal memberships in other clubs from here to New Haven. (Really, when you think of it, the blogging world was probably invented for metaphors. They wanted a place where they could happen profusely, safe from editorially intervention. Blogs are a metaphor’s idea of heaven–the way we are merely carriers of the meme.)
Anyhow. My point and I do have one: posts accumulate. And, when brought together, they begin to network. Created discretely, they begin to interact with one another. Larger themes, and posts, begin to emerge. Before we know it, weve got a book on our hands. Or at least a larger constellation of some kind.
This method of book construction is, as I noted, actually better as a way to approach certain topics. Parallel processing brings us back to the same topic over and over, liberated from the perspectival tyranny of the classic French intellectual.
But if that argument doesnt move you, this one surely will. Writing books out of blogs, proceeding by fragment and overlap, is vastly easier than the traditional method. In the old method, we work from the big idea down. Here we are working from small increments up. Bottom up?
Anything to ease the pain of writing must be a good thing. Blogs don’t have to apologize as the second class citizens of the intellectual world. They may be the next new thing.
For Virginias post, “The Cost of Blogging, go here.
For an example of posts accumulating: “Where do ideas come from: the M&Ms way, go here.
For another take on posts accumulating: “Blogging: what its for, how it pays, go here.
“The posts we write over several years could be seen as so many pylons peaking out of Long Island Sound. Eventually we wonder if we couldnt fashion a dock out of these.”
1. Peaking? Peking? Ah: Peeking.
2. Dock? That’s a waterery place, as revealed in “dry dock.” Try “pier” or “wharf.”
Nice essay, however. Ruminate away.
Axel, witting and right, thanks, corrections so made. (I went with wharf.) Best, Grant
Blogging is neither a medium or a message, it is a tool. Some blogs have multiple posts per day, some once per day, some once per week, some less. Some blogs are group efforts, some are individual efforts. Each blog has a different style, but they tend to fall into several categories based upon how often they are contributed to.
Those who post once per week or less tend to write similarly to magazine columnists: they can think deeply and have time to polish their prose and arguments (like The Becker-Postner Blog or I, Cringly @ PBS.org).
Multiple-daily posters tend to write similarly to 24-hour news channels: they report on events or ideas with incomplete or no analysis while being very current (like Gizmodo or Boing Boing).
I agree with your characterization of daily bloggers, they tend towards variations on themes and create a constellation of linked ideas.
In the end, blogging is what the individual(s) creating the blog wants it to be and why he/she/they wants it to be so. I could assemble a group of people who could create a blog with multiple daily posts of latest events, daily posts from analysts, and weekly posts from columnists. Then I would have duplicated a newspaper / news magazine electronically. But that would be stupid when anyone can pick their own group of blogs with their own mix of desired content.
Maybe Virginia is reading the wrong blogs. It is as if she wants thoughtful insight from CNN Headline News.
This is my first time here. I got a link from Knowledge Problem, and was interested since I’m looking at things a little differently. After about 3 years of blogging I’m getting out. I started out with good intentions, desiring to shape my thoughts and use the discipline of daily posting to improve my writing.
I would like to think that my writing has improved. My frustration is the falling off of the few people who did happen to come by my blog in the earlier days. I now feel like a pylon away from a wharf. An occasional boat may tie up to me, but otherwise it’s just a lot of ocean around me.
I wanted the feedback to help my writing and my thinking skills, but perhaps the blogosphere is not the place for me to be looking for that. You can find some blog buddies, and I have, so it has not been all for naught.
The blogosphere is one of the great modern social experiments, and I’m curious to see how sociologists and anthropologists will view this phenomenon 50 to 100 years from now (not that I’ll be here!).
I’m where MarkV used to be. I’m just embarking on this, and having an absolute blast with it. But the daily time is a major distraction from doing things like business development/earning a living. There’s no question, my blog (www.arc.typepad.com/customercrossroads) is a billboard in a basement at this point. I guess I’ll have to reassess in a year, and see what I think.
However, I want to note that it’s still early days in terms of people understanding how to get aggregators and blog feeds. And without easy ways to scan a few favorites, blogs are flotsam on the Mississippi of communication we have to deal with. I’ve spoken to many otherwise bright intelligent people who aren’t too sure what a blog is, forget aggregators. So I think it is still early days.
Sorry for rambling — blogging does that to you. But I like Grant’s notion of breaking up the writing into less overwhelming pieces. I really want to do a book, but have been having trouble getting over the wall — I think the blog will really help with that.
I also think that the voice I can use on my blog is quite different, easier, and more opinionated than what I can put on my web site white papers. As is the subject matter I can talk about. And I like that aspect a lot as well.
But as to why we blog: it’s a variation on 15-minutes-of-fame — why wait for the world to declare you as a guru, big thinker or expert when you can self-declare.
I’m where MarkV used to be. I’m just embarking on this, and having an absolute blast with it. But the daily time is a major distraction from doing things like business development/earning a living. There’s no question, my blog (www.arc.typepad.com/customercrossroads) is a billboard in a basement at this point. I guess I’ll have to reassess in a year, and see what I think.
However, I want to note that it’s still early days in terms of people understanding how to get aggregators and blog feeds. And without easy ways to scan a few favorites, blogs are flotsam on the Mississippi of communication we have to deal with. I’ve spoken to many otherwise bright intelligent people who aren’t too sure what a blog is, forget aggregators. So I think it is still early days.
Sorry for rambling — blogging does that to you. But I like Grant’s notion of breaking up the writing into less overwhelming pieces. I really want to do a book, but have been having trouble getting over the wall — I think the blog will really help with that.
I also think that the voice I can use on my blog is quite different, easier, and more opinionated than what I can put on my web site white papers. As is the subject matter I can talk about. And I like that aspect a lot as well.
But as to why we blog: it’s a variation on 15-minutes-of-fame — why wait for the world to declare you as a guru, big thinker or expert when you can self-declare.
I want to note that it’s still early days in terms of people understanding how to get aggregators and blog feeds. And without easy ways to scan a few favorites, blogs are flotsam on the Mississippi of communication we have to deal with. I’ve spoken to many otherwise bright intelligent people who aren’t too sure what a blog is, forget aggregators. So I think it is still early days.
Sorry for rambling — blogging does that to you. But I like Grant’s notion of breaking up the writing into less overwhelming pieces. I really want to do a book, but have been having trouble getting over the wall — I think the blog will really help with that.
I also think that the voice I can use on my blog is quite different, easier, and more opinionated than what I can put on my web site white papers. As is the subject matter I can talk about. And I like that aspect a lot as well
=======================================
kevin
Drug Intervention Georgia