Apparently, writing a blog is like wearing a pocket protector: proof that one has not kept up in reading the memos that inform us about what has fallen out of fashion. A recent version of Harper's Index mentioned that 94% of all blogs have not been updated in the last 4 months.
Apparently most would-be bloggers need actual readers. That seems to me rather like deciding not to golf on weekends until a quiet but respectful crowd follows you from hole to hole.(And just for the record, that is why I don't golf. I tried it once and the adoring crowd failed to materialize.)
Those of you expecting some recognition for blogging should be sobered by this simple fact: even the spell checker at blogspot does not recognize the word "bloggers."
R World (Ron Davison muses aloud)
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
04 September 2009
03 August 2008
SPAM I AM
For a brief time, mine was an outlaw blog.
A couple of days ago, I got a note from the good folks at blogspot informing me that my blog had been designated a spam blog. They warned me that they would delete the blog in about 20 days if I did not request a human review to confirm that a human writes R World. I came disconcertingly close to losing nearly two years worth of writing.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that I realized that my email traffic had dropped off precipitously because the good folks at cox had decided to randomly designate about half my mail as SPAM and hide it in an on-line folder. It took me weeks to realize what was going on and stop it. It may have taken me 20 days.
Imagine if the blog spam note had itself been designated as spam email. These two spam machines might have conspired to silence me altogether, de-blogged and de-mailed, abruptly made into an information-age eunuch by mindless algorithms.
In past centuries, censorship was enacted by church or state officials with a particular agenda, mindfully protecting us from offensive information. Today, censorship has become automatic, enacted by simple algorithms that mindlessly protect us from offensive information. It used to be bureaucrats who followed rules; now it is just rules following rules, algorithms that decide what gets through and what stays out of consciousness.
Given that machines are the new censors, I'm going to take this whole imbroglio as a compliment, proof that it was an excess of humanity that left the algorithms perplexed, offended, and convinced that I should be silenced.
Then again, I still find the whole idea of Dick Cheney being behind this thwarted attack on R World rather alluring. Knowing that I’ve made his enemies list is enough to make me feel masculine again, even when fully immersed in a bubble bath.
Update:
My buddy Eric pointed me to this article that (sort of) explained what happened to me. That Cheney is so crafty - he made it look like he wasn't just targeting me.
A couple of days ago, I got a note from the good folks at blogspot informing me that my blog had been designated a spam blog. They warned me that they would delete the blog in about 20 days if I did not request a human review to confirm that a human writes R World. I came disconcertingly close to losing nearly two years worth of writing.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that I realized that my email traffic had dropped off precipitously because the good folks at cox had decided to randomly designate about half my mail as SPAM and hide it in an on-line folder. It took me weeks to realize what was going on and stop it. It may have taken me 20 days.
Imagine if the blog spam note had itself been designated as spam email. These two spam machines might have conspired to silence me altogether, de-blogged and de-mailed, abruptly made into an information-age eunuch by mindless algorithms.
In past centuries, censorship was enacted by church or state officials with a particular agenda, mindfully protecting us from offensive information. Today, censorship has become automatic, enacted by simple algorithms that mindlessly protect us from offensive information. It used to be bureaucrats who followed rules; now it is just rules following rules, algorithms that decide what gets through and what stays out of consciousness.
Given that machines are the new censors, I'm going to take this whole imbroglio as a compliment, proof that it was an excess of humanity that left the algorithms perplexed, offended, and convinced that I should be silenced.
Then again, I still find the whole idea of Dick Cheney being behind this thwarted attack on R World rather alluring. Knowing that I’ve made his enemies list is enough to make me feel masculine again, even when fully immersed in a bubble bath.
Update:
My buddy Eric pointed me to this article that (sort of) explained what happened to me. That Cheney is so crafty - he made it look like he wasn't just targeting me.
20 March 2007
Is Objectivity on its Death Bed?
Markets aren't magical. They simply bring together supply and demand. This can be frightening in the world of media as there is demand for certain kinds of opinions that people are happy to supply. There is demand for stories about conspiracies, extraterrestrials, heroes, and villains. While I am not saying that none of these things exist, I am saying that the supply of such stories has more to do with demand than supporting data.
There is an argument that blogs are the worst offenders in the supply of "demand-for" opinions. An intriguing post by Bruno Giussani, "Medialess Culture / Cultureless Media," explores a variety of topics. One is the claim (reported, rather than made, by Giussani) that "A key phenomena is that one of the central classic notions of journalism, objectivity, is nowhere to be found on the blogs."
Has a market-driven media and the free-for-all blogs brought us into the world defined by deconstructionists - a relativistic chasm into which any voice can shout out bizarre claims and hear them echoed in the form of shared delusions and confirmed opinions? Has nuance become a foreign language? It is easy to become pessimistic about the future of informed discourse if we accept these claims, believing that the media and Internet have fragmented into self-referential opinion factories.
And yet, I remain stupidly optimistic. Why? Because along with the market for opinions, there is a market for efficacy, for what works. People who are making a difference will force a confrontation between reality and the many opinions and theories about it. Bloggers can swap opinions, but they can also challenge conventional views that have muddled our perception of reality. And in the end, reality will prevail. It always does. Eventually.
There is an argument that blogs are the worst offenders in the supply of "demand-for" opinions. An intriguing post by Bruno Giussani, "Medialess Culture / Cultureless Media," explores a variety of topics. One is the claim (reported, rather than made, by Giussani) that "A key phenomena is that one of the central classic notions of journalism, objectivity, is nowhere to be found on the blogs."
Has a market-driven media and the free-for-all blogs brought us into the world defined by deconstructionists - a relativistic chasm into which any voice can shout out bizarre claims and hear them echoed in the form of shared delusions and confirmed opinions? Has nuance become a foreign language? It is easy to become pessimistic about the future of informed discourse if we accept these claims, believing that the media and Internet have fragmented into self-referential opinion factories.
And yet, I remain stupidly optimistic. Why? Because along with the market for opinions, there is a market for efficacy, for what works. People who are making a difference will force a confrontation between reality and the many opinions and theories about it. Bloggers can swap opinions, but they can also challenge conventional views that have muddled our perception of reality. And in the end, reality will prevail. It always does. Eventually.
16 March 2007
Blog Karaoke
If plagiarism is equivalent to lip-synching, than using your blog to continually showcase words and videos generated by others is the equivalent of blogging karaoke.
21 January 2007
An Intelligent Conversation?
Indulge me in a moment of pleasure and optimism: The Atlantic and Andrew Sullivan are teaming up. Sullivan's blog will be folded into The Atlantic's website and he will become one of their senior editors.
Andrew Sullivan is a thinker I've inexplicably enjoyed since his time as editor at The New Republic 15 years ago. I say inexplicably not because his tone, erudition, and writing lack obvious appeal. I say inexplicably because I'm not conservative, Catholic, or gay - as he is. In spite of our differences in worldview, I find his ideas compelling.
The Atlantic is, for me, the epitome of good journalism. It is intelligent, thoughtful, and reluctant to rush to a conclusion when the data suggests no easy answer. I suppose no one source has had more influence on my political sensibilities; I began reading it in my late teens, more than a quarter of a century ago.
The Atlantic is more like a book than a magazine in that its articles have a shelf life rather like wine; a blog, by contrast, typically has a shelf life more like milk. Given it comes out only 10 times a year, The Atlantic is somewhat like a prepared speech to which one listens. A blog, by contrast, is more like a conversation in which one engages. (but is, sadly enough, too often like a conversation with someone suffering from ADD).
This merger of the magazine’s magazine with a pioneering blog suggests a tantalizing possibility: an intelligent conversation that occurs in real time but has, for its context, larger issues than the distraction of the day. If The Atlantic is able to merge the instantaneous, interactive nature of blogs with its mastery of showcasing ideas that deserve reprint 150 years later, they may well have a product that is able to transform the national conversation. If they succeed at this, I will become a real fan. That is, instead of merely admiring the magazine, I will wear a NFL style jersey in public that, in lieu of a name like “Tomlinson” or "Manning" has “Sullivan” or fellow Atlantic editor “Fallows” written across the back.
Andrew Sullivan is a thinker I've inexplicably enjoyed since his time as editor at The New Republic 15 years ago. I say inexplicably not because his tone, erudition, and writing lack obvious appeal. I say inexplicably because I'm not conservative, Catholic, or gay - as he is. In spite of our differences in worldview, I find his ideas compelling.
The Atlantic is, for me, the epitome of good journalism. It is intelligent, thoughtful, and reluctant to rush to a conclusion when the data suggests no easy answer. I suppose no one source has had more influence on my political sensibilities; I began reading it in my late teens, more than a quarter of a century ago.
The Atlantic is more like a book than a magazine in that its articles have a shelf life rather like wine; a blog, by contrast, typically has a shelf life more like milk. Given it comes out only 10 times a year, The Atlantic is somewhat like a prepared speech to which one listens. A blog, by contrast, is more like a conversation in which one engages. (but is, sadly enough, too often like a conversation with someone suffering from ADD).
This merger of the magazine’s magazine with a pioneering blog suggests a tantalizing possibility: an intelligent conversation that occurs in real time but has, for its context, larger issues than the distraction of the day. If The Atlantic is able to merge the instantaneous, interactive nature of blogs with its mastery of showcasing ideas that deserve reprint 150 years later, they may well have a product that is able to transform the national conversation. If they succeed at this, I will become a real fan. That is, instead of merely admiring the magazine, I will wear a NFL style jersey in public that, in lieu of a name like “Tomlinson” or "Manning" has “Sullivan” or fellow Atlantic editor “Fallows” written across the back.
12 January 2007
Blogging and Global Consciousness
"It is the ‘turning inward’ aspect of the self — its recursiveness — that gives it its peculiar paradoxical quality.”
UC San Diego professor V.S. Ramachandran on the "Neurology of Self-Awareness"
Some claim that through the Internet we have created a new kind of consciousness, a global self. They must be right. As I stroll through the blogosphere I find so many blogs about blogging. The catalyst may have once been to engage in a dialogue, to change the world, but the continual and seemingly inevitable distraction, towards which so many bloggers eventually flock like moths to a light, are rankings, stats, and market share. So busy looking for how to get readers they forget why they wanted them in the first place.
Blogging has become an act of chronicling blogging - a recursive act that seems certain to implode.
UC San Diego professor V.S. Ramachandran on the "Neurology of Self-Awareness"
Some claim that through the Internet we have created a new kind of consciousness, a global self. They must be right. As I stroll through the blogosphere I find so many blogs about blogging. The catalyst may have once been to engage in a dialogue, to change the world, but the continual and seemingly inevitable distraction, towards which so many bloggers eventually flock like moths to a light, are rankings, stats, and market share. So busy looking for how to get readers they forget why they wanted them in the first place.
Blogging has become an act of chronicling blogging - a recursive act that seems certain to implode.
11 January 2007
The "Truth" Shattered by Blogs
"There are facts and there are opinions. Our news offers up facts."
This odd little myth is one perpetuated by news organizations for decades. It was an odd supposition, resting as it did on a refusal to acknowledge how important context and culture were to even the choice of topics covered. A person living in Topeka, Kansas will not only be interested in different stories than a person living in London, much less Jakarta, but will come to the topic with different referents, comparisons, and values.
There are obviously "facts" that can be reported but the story doesn't start until one overlays meaning onto those facts. Investigative reporter Douglas Foster once said, "The only objective journalism is journalism with an objective."
The blogs have shattered the notion that there is a "truth" that is reported more or less effectively by the media. Rather, there are various goals that groups have - goals as diverse as a return to the 1950's to subordinating everything to the principle of continuous disruption in technology and business. Those various goals result in very different ideas about what constitutes a story and how to tell that story. Even more, those goals turn facts into stories.
This odd little myth is one perpetuated by news organizations for decades. It was an odd supposition, resting as it did on a refusal to acknowledge how important context and culture were to even the choice of topics covered. A person living in Topeka, Kansas will not only be interested in different stories than a person living in London, much less Jakarta, but will come to the topic with different referents, comparisons, and values.
There are obviously "facts" that can be reported but the story doesn't start until one overlays meaning onto those facts. Investigative reporter Douglas Foster once said, "The only objective journalism is journalism with an objective."
The blogs have shattered the notion that there is a "truth" that is reported more or less effectively by the media. Rather, there are various goals that groups have - goals as diverse as a return to the 1950's to subordinating everything to the principle of continuous disruption in technology and business. Those various goals result in very different ideas about what constitutes a story and how to tell that story. Even more, those goals turn facts into stories.
16 December 2006
Blogging, Video Games, the Progression of Art & the Future of Politics
I saw a recent report that suggested that blogging has peaked. I'd like to suggest that the full influence of blogging has yet to be felt.
Renaissance art changed how people thought about reality. The art went from iconic to realistic, from celebrating divinity that merely happened to take a human form to celebrating the human form. The Renaissance, with its emphasis on secular issues and response to market forces, represented a shift from heaven to earth. How people perceive the world through their art makes a huge difference in their expectations about how the world ought to be.
In the last generation, video games have become a huge market. It is not just true that the video game industry has become bigger than movie videos, but I would strongly suspect that time spent with any one video game is a multiple of the time spent with any one video; gamers play for hours and movie fans watch for about 100 minutes. Hence, the time spent on video games is even greater than the money spent on video games. These games have changed the consciousness of a generation of youth.
What makes video games unique in the progression of dominant art forms?
Through the history of the West, the dominant art has arguably progressed from the painting and sculptures of the Renaissance (think DaVinci, Michelangelo, and Botticelli) the classical music of the Enlightenment (think Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach), and the novels of the age of capitalism (think Dickens, Faulkner, and Twain) and, most recently, movies. In each of these past forms, the spectator is expected to admire. You are expected to gaze in awe at Michelangelo's David, to listen enraptured to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or become engrossed in Faulkner's Sound & the Fury or sit in admiration of Benigni's film, Life is Beautiful. By contrast, I am expected to become a participant in the video games Civilization or Halo. Video games, although not yet the dominant art form, are different from any other “art” form in the history of the West.
Blogging is to news and commentary what video games are to entertainment; blogs thrust the spectator into the role (however briefly and for however small of an audience) of performer. Blogs blur the boundary between spectator and participant.
Has blogging peaked? I doubt it. Rather, I suspect that the real influence of blogging has only begun to be felt. Just as the orchestration and precision of classical music symphony presaged the factories of the industrial age and Renaissance art shifted focus to the here and now, video games and blogging have changed the definition of spectator and will change what it means to be consumers or voters. The generation that grows up blogging and playing video games is going to scoff at being excluded from participation in formulating policy or having to choose options that have been defined by others. Rather, the politics of this generation will be a politics of participation.
The successful politicians and parties won't pretend to offer a tightly plotted narrative like a filmmaker; rather, they will offer a context and platform for participation, like the designer of a video game. The successful policy makers won’t be those who craft the most admirable policy; they’ll be the policy-makers who are best able to create mechanisms for policy formulation that engage the average citizen.
Whoever first makes this shift will win over a new generation of voters. Has blogging peaked? No. Rather, the medium of blogging has only just begun to change our expectations of politics, policy, and community. As with all technology, the really interesting stage of adoption occurs when new technological inventions trigger new social inventions. This is the dance of social evolution and the popularity of blogging is just the first step in that dance. Get ready. Soon the floor will begin shaking.
Renaissance art changed how people thought about reality. The art went from iconic to realistic, from celebrating divinity that merely happened to take a human form to celebrating the human form. The Renaissance, with its emphasis on secular issues and response to market forces, represented a shift from heaven to earth. How people perceive the world through their art makes a huge difference in their expectations about how the world ought to be.
In the last generation, video games have become a huge market. It is not just true that the video game industry has become bigger than movie videos, but I would strongly suspect that time spent with any one video game is a multiple of the time spent with any one video; gamers play for hours and movie fans watch for about 100 minutes. Hence, the time spent on video games is even greater than the money spent on video games. These games have changed the consciousness of a generation of youth.
What makes video games unique in the progression of dominant art forms?
Through the history of the West, the dominant art has arguably progressed from the painting and sculptures of the Renaissance (think DaVinci, Michelangelo, and Botticelli) the classical music of the Enlightenment (think Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach), and the novels of the age of capitalism (think Dickens, Faulkner, and Twain) and, most recently, movies. In each of these past forms, the spectator is expected to admire. You are expected to gaze in awe at Michelangelo's David, to listen enraptured to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or become engrossed in Faulkner's Sound & the Fury or sit in admiration of Benigni's film, Life is Beautiful. By contrast, I am expected to become a participant in the video games Civilization or Halo. Video games, although not yet the dominant art form, are different from any other “art” form in the history of the West.
Blogging is to news and commentary what video games are to entertainment; blogs thrust the spectator into the role (however briefly and for however small of an audience) of performer. Blogs blur the boundary between spectator and participant.
Has blogging peaked? I doubt it. Rather, I suspect that the real influence of blogging has only begun to be felt. Just as the orchestration and precision of classical music symphony presaged the factories of the industrial age and Renaissance art shifted focus to the here and now, video games and blogging have changed the definition of spectator and will change what it means to be consumers or voters. The generation that grows up blogging and playing video games is going to scoff at being excluded from participation in formulating policy or having to choose options that have been defined by others. Rather, the politics of this generation will be a politics of participation.
The successful politicians and parties won't pretend to offer a tightly plotted narrative like a filmmaker; rather, they will offer a context and platform for participation, like the designer of a video game. The successful policy makers won’t be those who craft the most admirable policy; they’ll be the policy-makers who are best able to create mechanisms for policy formulation that engage the average citizen.
Whoever first makes this shift will win over a new generation of voters. Has blogging peaked? No. Rather, the medium of blogging has only just begun to change our expectations of politics, policy, and community. As with all technology, the really interesting stage of adoption occurs when new technological inventions trigger new social inventions. This is the dance of social evolution and the popularity of blogging is just the first step in that dance. Get ready. Soon the floor will begin shaking.
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