This is your brain: This is your brain on weblogs
This space is intended for my thoughts on what weblogging has done for me personally. I include here observations that friends and acquaintances have made about the process.
weblogs and the weblogger
Using weblogs changes the way you relate to the world. It changes your sense of responsibility. You own the media. You are responsible to it, responsible to your audience. Why is it so different from, say, printing your own newspaper?
First, you had to own a press to print your own newspaper. You were also stuck with whatever you wrote forever...it was history the minute you printed it. The paper started yellowing the minute you set it out under the sun.
With weblogs, you can not only go back and change them, you can also consider them history. Forever. As many billions of words as there are in the blogosphere, they are also findable down to the infinite degree through google. They not only can be found, but probably will be someday. And they are also being archived. But they are lit-up history. Information is so easy to store these days, that whatever we write can be stored, even as we write about it, with no great loss to anyone.
I sometimes reflect on the responsibility of the blogger...other than to entertain and be truthful at the same time. That's already a handful, and I don't always live up to it.
People are using blogs for a number of purposes: they complain, criticize, persuade in the political arena, share information, spread rumors, promote themselves, etc. I've partaken in some of these, especially self-promotion, but I've also found them useful in some unusual ways. First, I find that if I challenge myself in them, I often live up to the challenges- so they are useful in tentative self-actualization...and very empowering in that way. Second, as a scattered person, it's good to keep track of various projects that I have going...and weblogs serve as an online organizer.
As a "multiblogger" (Hornsby 2004) who speaks in different realms, I find that the truth is often boring but stretching it is dangerous. This is true in every realm, in self-promotion, in esl, and here. Just like the print media...
Sometimes I consider myself like a baseball pitcher. I want to put it right down the pike, as we used to say in PA. You always get another chance, even if the last one was a mile wide. The audience is always a little hostile, waving a bat, waiting to pop one out of here, if not pop me outta here. But they aren't going to get the chance. My hat's down, I'm glaring at them, I'm down here, publishing in the bowels of my own obscure blog, which is meanwhile being hidden by the fact that I'll just move the top post up whenever I need more space...
But I'm not really like a pitcher, because the world isn't always hostile. I'm really playing to the fans, who want mostly to be entertained on a nice day. They are impatient with poor writing, and with people who don't know what they're talking about. They're impatient with drivel and bad grammar, or maybe I'm just projecting here. They want something to think about.
Visual nature of weblogs
I've been thinking about this a lot, because so many weblogs start out in your typical blogger format, but some of the more resourceful people see how important the visuals are right away and exploit them. I"m behind the curve on this one: though I have lots of photos I could use, I actually use the wrong ones; I give conflicting messages, etc. I'm a beginner.
There are a number of implications for teachers and the academic environment. Teachers may be quick to realize when they're being manipulated by an image; they may be more in tune with the words, etc. But everyone likes a good picture, a "look"...and there are some good "looks" out there.
I've also been slow on the technological end of things. The average picture uploaded from a digital camera is way too large for most web purposes, yet this is what we need a constant running supply of: instant picture news. We actually have to run them through e-mail to make them smaller, but flickr has been a lifesaver too. The hardest thing is to organize this stuff when you're busy. But I"ve begun to see the weblogs as the center, rather than the static pages, and I've begun to organize accordingly.
Here's an example of the power of visuals:
Jason de Fillippo, technology
Watson, quoted in Badger:
Not this one in particular, but you get the idea. Put something strong, catch them, draw them in.
Another example follows the Google theory. Simple, a lot of white, colorful, let the image(s) do the talking.
Parking Lot, Chris Corrigan.
Creative uses of weblogs & their environment
(see 100 things to do with weblogs)
I've found a lot of practical processes to use while blogging. First, your blogger "edit-post" supply cabinet is full of drawers that you can reorganize at any time, and this can be very useful to you when you aren't ready to show the world all your thoughts right away (like now)...so you can treat it like your own accordion file which you can access when you are ready, and make public ready when you are ready to point to it. And the rest of the time, the world will leave you alone, because it's not the top post (which is always being read by the surfers/blogbots, etc.).
I've read about schadenbloggers (using blogs to complain?)...does this actually make people feel better? Sometimes I want a blog for all my moods, one for each, one for my political self even, just so I can vent whenever I want. But I already feel bad about the blogs that I've put out there that are like dead branches on a tree. One part of me wants to go out there and "delete"...in one sense blogs are like gardens...you shouldn't plant more than you can weed or hoe, you shouldn't let them go to flower and overflow year after year. Haiku has taught me to be spare, put out there what you need, make it sharp, powerful, put it right down the pike. Then it'll sit there and look interesting for at least a little while...
Not that I always follow all my own advice. I do the best I can...
weblogs and the researcher
The previous post had a section on academia's tenuous relationship with weblogging. I have always found academia to be uneasy with frank open truthfulness, even though research at its heart goes after truth, seeks the science and the logic behind all human and other behavior. In this sense weblogs have the capacity to profoundly change research. more later...
weblogs and the weblogger
Using weblogs changes the way you relate to the world. It changes your sense of responsibility. You own the media. You are responsible to it, responsible to your audience. Why is it so different from, say, printing your own newspaper?
First, you had to own a press to print your own newspaper. You were also stuck with whatever you wrote forever...it was history the minute you printed it. The paper started yellowing the minute you set it out under the sun.
With weblogs, you can not only go back and change them, you can also consider them history. Forever. As many billions of words as there are in the blogosphere, they are also findable down to the infinite degree through google. They not only can be found, but probably will be someday. And they are also being archived. But they are lit-up history. Information is so easy to store these days, that whatever we write can be stored, even as we write about it, with no great loss to anyone.
I sometimes reflect on the responsibility of the blogger...other than to entertain and be truthful at the same time. That's already a handful, and I don't always live up to it.
People are using blogs for a number of purposes: they complain, criticize, persuade in the political arena, share information, spread rumors, promote themselves, etc. I've partaken in some of these, especially self-promotion, but I've also found them useful in some unusual ways. First, I find that if I challenge myself in them, I often live up to the challenges- so they are useful in tentative self-actualization...and very empowering in that way. Second, as a scattered person, it's good to keep track of various projects that I have going...and weblogs serve as an online organizer.
As a "multiblogger" (Hornsby 2004) who speaks in different realms, I find that the truth is often boring but stretching it is dangerous. This is true in every realm, in self-promotion, in esl, and here. Just like the print media...
Sometimes I consider myself like a baseball pitcher. I want to put it right down the pike, as we used to say in PA. You always get another chance, even if the last one was a mile wide. The audience is always a little hostile, waving a bat, waiting to pop one out of here, if not pop me outta here. But they aren't going to get the chance. My hat's down, I'm glaring at them, I'm down here, publishing in the bowels of my own obscure blog, which is meanwhile being hidden by the fact that I'll just move the top post up whenever I need more space...
But I'm not really like a pitcher, because the world isn't always hostile. I'm really playing to the fans, who want mostly to be entertained on a nice day. They are impatient with poor writing, and with people who don't know what they're talking about. They're impatient with drivel and bad grammar, or maybe I'm just projecting here. They want something to think about.
Visual nature of weblogs
I've been thinking about this a lot, because so many weblogs start out in your typical blogger format, but some of the more resourceful people see how important the visuals are right away and exploit them. I"m behind the curve on this one: though I have lots of photos I could use, I actually use the wrong ones; I give conflicting messages, etc. I'm a beginner.
There are a number of implications for teachers and the academic environment. Teachers may be quick to realize when they're being manipulated by an image; they may be more in tune with the words, etc. But everyone likes a good picture, a "look"...and there are some good "looks" out there.
I've also been slow on the technological end of things. The average picture uploaded from a digital camera is way too large for most web purposes, yet this is what we need a constant running supply of: instant picture news. We actually have to run them through e-mail to make them smaller, but flickr has been a lifesaver too. The hardest thing is to organize this stuff when you're busy. But I"ve begun to see the weblogs as the center, rather than the static pages, and I've begun to organize accordingly.
Here's an example of the power of visuals:
Jason de Fillippo, technology
Watson, quoted in Badger:
"It's the image they'll remember the next day, and the next week and possibly for the rest of their lives."
Not this one in particular, but you get the idea. Put something strong, catch them, draw them in.
Another example follows the Google theory. Simple, a lot of white, colorful, let the image(s) do the talking.
Parking Lot, Chris Corrigan.
Creative uses of weblogs & their environment
(see 100 things to do with weblogs)
I've found a lot of practical processes to use while blogging. First, your blogger "edit-post" supply cabinet is full of drawers that you can reorganize at any time, and this can be very useful to you when you aren't ready to show the world all your thoughts right away (like now)...so you can treat it like your own accordion file which you can access when you are ready, and make public ready when you are ready to point to it. And the rest of the time, the world will leave you alone, because it's not the top post (which is always being read by the surfers/blogbots, etc.).
I've read about schadenbloggers (using blogs to complain?)...does this actually make people feel better? Sometimes I want a blog for all my moods, one for each, one for my political self even, just so I can vent whenever I want. But I already feel bad about the blogs that I've put out there that are like dead branches on a tree. One part of me wants to go out there and "delete"...in one sense blogs are like gardens...you shouldn't plant more than you can weed or hoe, you shouldn't let them go to flower and overflow year after year. Haiku has taught me to be spare, put out there what you need, make it sharp, powerful, put it right down the pike. Then it'll sit there and look interesting for at least a little while...
Not that I always follow all my own advice. I do the best I can...
weblogs and the researcher
The previous post had a section on academia's tenuous relationship with weblogging. I have always found academia to be uneasy with frank open truthfulness, even though research at its heart goes after truth, seeks the science and the logic behind all human and other behavior. In this sense weblogs have the capacity to profoundly change research. more later...
posted by CESL at 8:20 PM
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