18.480 blogging and v(l)ogging

From: Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 07:52:19 +0000

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 480.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk> (21)
         Subject: blogging, video-blogging and Jennycam?

   [2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk> (10)
         Subject: v(l)ogging

   [3] From: lachance_at_origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois (81)
                 Lachance)
         Subject: What to read was (Re: 18.477 blogging)

   [4] From: Norman Hinton <hinton_at_springnet1.com> (4)
         Subject: Re: 18.477 blogging

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2005 09:34:58 +0000
         From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
         Subject: blogging, video-blogging and Jennycam?

Video-blogging (vogging, or is it vlogging?) provides an obvious link from
the blog to the infamous Jennycam, which has been offline for more than a
year now. For the end of Jennycam, see the article in CNN,
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/12/10/jenni.cam.reut/, or better the
piece by Terry Teachout (drama critic of the Wall Street Journal) in
National Review Online,
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/teachout200312110800.asp, who notes
that "most blogs are the verbal equivalent of JenniCam". He cites,
disparagingly, an an attempt by John Suler, "Healthy and Pathological
Internet Use", in CyberPsychology and Behavior, to make sense of the
"hula-hope-type fad" of the Jennycam. But clearly there's a goldmine here
of raw material for studies of many kinds, of what, as Geoffrey Nunberg
says in "Farewell to the Information Age" (1996), is now bubbling to the
surface after a long suppression.

Any recommendations of such studies?

Yours,
WM

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Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Kay House, 7 Arundel Street | London
WC2R 3DX | U.K. | +44 (0)20 7848-2784 fax: -2980 ||
willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2005 11:19:55 +0000
         From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
         Subject: v(l)ogging

An addendum to the previous note. For v(l)ogging, see Adrian Miles, "Video
Blogging to Vogging", http://videoblogging.info/articles/vogging/; Gerard
Seenan, "Forget the bloggers, it's vloggers showing the way on the
internet", Guardian Online,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1279461,00.html.

WM

[NB: If you do not receive a reply within 24 hours please resend]
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Kay House, 7 Arundel Street | London
WC2R 3DX | U.K. | +44 (0)20 7848-2784 fax: -2980 ||
willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/

--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 07:45:21 +0000
         From: lachance_at_origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
         Subject: What to read was (Re: 18.477 blogging)

Willard and Matt,

Allow me to requote the posting from Norman Hinton:

          I try to avoid all blogs whenever possible.

and to record a few questions triggered by Matt's description of the
statement as "[a] textbook case of media essentialism".

Q1
Is there a nuance worth exploring between "avoiding" and "not reading"?
An analogous example to consider: some people do not read religiously the
daily newspapers but are in contact with friends who do. It is perhaps
worth considering that there is a conversation conversion factor at work
in the transmission of information and stories. The non-religous reader
may on occassion consult the material religiously reader by others.

Q2
Is "blog" to be conceptualized more by "genre" than "media"? There may be
folk who do not read blogs but who will regularly access other online
reasources and read them (or collect copies, as we have seen in the
cases discussed in the "indexing local machines" thread)?

Q3
When is a blog a blog? Does accessing an archived entry via a link
returned by search engine count as reading a blog? It could be conceived
as simply consulting a record. Blog reading much as does blog writing
seems to entail a repeated practice. See the invocation of religious use
in Q1 above.

Q4
How do judgements of worth prior to reading affect what is read? How does
one know that a given verbal object is trivial before one reads it? When
is the inductive generalization involved in moving from some to all
valid? Back to Q1. Trust. And a certain humanist civility that is willing
to grant that because I do not read [science fiction, comic books, Latin
odes] does not mean you should not. And an even greater self-reflexivity
that is quick to grasp that the expression of one persons' preference is
not necessarily an invitation to buy into those preferences.

Of course in the competitive world of who gets what grant money there are
those valuations of cultural capital which have very much buy-in impact.
However, depending upon the discursive frame that is applied, in the
context of a discussion of alternatives, the expression of a preference
could appear to be a vote, or a step in exploring the variety of
experiences necessary for testing consensus.

>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 477.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
> www.princeton.edu/humanist/
> Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
>
>
>
> Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2005 09:13:05 +0000
> From: Matt Kirschenbaum <mkirschenbaum_at_gmail.com>
> >
> A textbook case of media essentialism. By this logic I wouldn't read
> any books because some are worthless or trivial.
>
> Anyone who doubts the import of blogging should check in with Dan
Rather. Matt
>
>
> > --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 10:19:03 +0000
> > From: Norman Hinton <hinton_at_springnet1.com>
> > >
> > I try to avoid all blogs whenever possible.
> >
>
>
> --
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>

--
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
A calendar is like a map. And just as maps have insets, calendars in the
21st century might have 'moments' expressed in flat local time fanning out
into "great circles" expressed in earth revolution time.
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 07:45:53 +0000
         From: Norman Hinton <hinton_at_springnet1.com>
         Subject: Re: 18.477 blogging
 >A textbook case of media essentialism. By this logic I wouldn't read
 >any books because some are worthless or trivial.
People have referred me to blog after blog, and I find them self-serving,
unstructured, and boring.  Sorry. After a year or so you tend to quit
trying.  This doesn't seem to be the case with books.
Received on Mon Jan 10 2005 - 03:01:16 EST

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