18.498 blogging &c

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 498.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
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   [1] From: Adrian Miles <adrian.miles_at_rmit.edu.au> (16)
         Subject: Re: 18.459 Humanist and blogging

   [2] From: Matt Kirschenbaum <mkirschenbaum_at_gmail.com> (25)
         Subject: Re: 18.484 blogging and v(l)ogging

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:41:37 +0000
         From: Adrian Miles <adrian.miles_at_rmit.edu.au>
         Subject: Re: 18.459 Humanist and blogging

On 04/01/2005, at 7:25 PM, Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard
McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>) wrote:

>Taking up after days on Francois's comment on spam leading to a move away
>from email: I suppose nothing much would in principle stop the Humanist
>list from becoming a blog to which all members could post? I wonder if it
>might be worth a try to experiment?

a bad idea :-)

blogs work best as individual's writing, or at best small collectives. This
is their strength and why they have developed so rapidly and successfully.
They are poor tools for large collaborations. I'd suggest email lists
remain by far the more effective way to conduct the sorts of conversations
that go on here.

cheers
Adrian Miles

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--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:42:30 +0000
         From: Matt Kirschenbaum <mkirschenbaum_at_gmail.com>
         Subject: Re: 18.484 blogging and v(l)ogging

Norman Gray writes:

> But this is the nature of people's diaries. A blog is not a
> carefully-structured publication, but something much more like a
> commonplace book which happens to be generally readable. An interesting
> person will at least sometimes have something interesting in their blog,
> and I get to look over their shoulder as they note it down for themself;
> more one cannot expect.

As with any genre/format/medium, it's difficult to make general
assertions about blogs and have them stick. To be sure, some blogs are
like Norman's description of a commonplace book--I hope Geoffrey
Rockwell doesn't mind if I suggest his as an example--but many are
also conceived and written for an assumed audience (eg., the ur-blog
Justin's Links). I suspect the illusion of reading over someone's
shoulder is deceptive, and that bloggers are more performative in
their writing than we tend to acknowledge. Matt

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