I just found an older (June 10, 2003) article in Business Week that compares blogs to open source software. [Link][comments?][Karma: 16 ( + / - )]
In medieval times, in the age of manuscripts, readers (scholars) were able to add their thoughts directly into the handwritten text. Their additions became just as important to the original text and sometimes the additions made their way into the "official text" during the copying process. Then came the printing press. A reader could still write her notes in the text, but her notes could never become a part of the official text. A printed work became fixated unless the author updated the text with another edition. Any extra notes that were official to the book were added by the author, and were put aside as footnotes. Readers could add their own notes in the whitespace of the margins, but their notes never crept into the official work. Thus, a reader's input became marginal in the age of print. Now here is hypertext, which allows readers (oh, you Dear Readers) to again add your comments to the author's work. Your comments are made important again and become part of the discussion, the argument, the meaning of the work (with all of the deconstructionist implications), and the literal work itself. Hypertext, and blogs in particular, give power back to the reader, and acknowledge the feedback loop that creates and shapes meaning in every work. If Dickens had access to this feedback loop, would he be so bold as to address you Dear Readers so directly? [Link][comments?][Karma: 4 ( + / - )]
I have been thinking of arguing in my thesis that a blog is an open source diary. Blogs acknowledge the immediate influence of others on one's written self. Traditional diaries, on the other hand, do not show an obvious influence on the written self caused by interactions outside of the diary. (I use "written self" here as the personality that is implicit in the diarist's or blogger's writing. I distinguish "written self" from "personality" because a diarist or blogger can discuss her personality in her work, whether her discussion matches the personality that jumps out at you from the page or not.) Originally, I was going to compare Samuel Pepys' diary as it was originally written to "his" blog. The entries in "his" blog are made up of entries from his diary. The problem here is that, while readers of the blog comment on the diary entries and add meaning to the diary, they do not influence Pepys' written self as he is dead. So I may have to rethink using Pepys... [Link][1 comments][Karma: 12 ( + / - )]
In today's round-up of stories, CBS Marketwatch has a little snippet, titled Risks of Writing Online about bloggers' issues with privacy and liability. You can find Fernanda Viégas's survey on which this snippet is based here. "Accounts of bloggers either hurting friends’ feelings or losing jobs because of materials published on their sites are becoming more frequent," Viégas says in the Summary of Findings. Sometimes we forget about the millions of eyes on the other side of the monitor screen. [Link][comments?][Karma: 8 ( + / - )]
Reuters reports that that the Chinese government shut down Blogbus and Blogcn, two very popular Chinese blog hosting sites as part of a recent crack down on blogs. Chinese bloggers cannot post about the forbidden topic of Tiananmen Square, criticisms about Communism, or criticisms about China's treatment of Tibet. While all censorship is deplorable, in this case it seems all the more harsh because it takes place in the seemingly open society of the Internet. By nature, blogs can serve as great agents of social change. Just look at Howard Dean's Blog For America (now called Democracy for America). Any group or individual that is the object of this power must quake in their boots. [Link][comments?][Karma: 12 ( + / - )]
I should read up on the open source movement through blog-colored glasses. Is the need to publish personal information on the Web related to the philosophy of the open source movement? What about the Internet makes everyone want to share everything? Is it because the Internet started out as a way to easily share research information? [Link][comments?][Karma: 5 ( + / - )]
Newsday carries this story about Shia Muslim cleric Mohammad Ali Abtahi and his blog. Despite numerous complaints from hardliners, Abtahi continues to post candid opinions and sketches of world events and everyday life. In his own words: "Let me be myself - Mohammad Ali Abtahi - in this website; regardless to my official and governmental status." Here's to you, sir! [Link][comments?][Karma: 11 ( + / - )]
C|Net reports in this article that Dave Winer, one of the creators of the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) format, proposes a plan to merge RSS with Atom, another syndicating technology and one that Google adopted. RSS, a technology that allows bloggers to broadcast summaries of their postings to interested subscribers, was mentioned earlier in this blog here. The merging of the two technologies would probably be done within a set of standards: the creators of Atom have drafted an IETF (The Internet Engineering Task Force) working group charter. The merger would also help bloggers and other news/content sources share their content more easily, and wouldn't have to worry about compatibility. [Link][4 comments][Karma: 7 ( + / - )]
I'm finally digging in to Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print by Jay David Bolter for the second time. I read it last Spring semester for class and am reading it again for my thesis. In talking about how more texts are being distributed electronically rather than in print, Bolter says, "Although print remains indispensable, it no longer seems indispensable...[2] Does the fact that a medium is considered indispensable makes it more legitimate? Is a printed war diary from a Civil War soldier, or Ernie Pyle's books, more legitimate than a warblog just because the former two were first distributed in print? If it seems that we never learn from our mistakes, particularly in war, then the promise that print's stability and permanence can remind us of our mistakes is an empty one. Does that make print less legitimate? Does a warblog's ephemeral nature make it more legitimate or "truer" because it doesn't hold the assumption that the blog will be available in 20 years to teach us anything? Is this why Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger, had portions of his blog printed into a book so that 20 years from now, we might all learn from his experiences? Update: I should compare both Salam Pax's blog and the printed entries to see if any meaning is lost or if the message changes when switching from one medium to the other. [Link][comments?][Karma: 4 ( + / - )]
It's like blogger dave eubanks read my mind. Or I read his. In this post, he lists a great many of the issues I'd like to discuss in my thesis. Now if only I could definitively answer his question. |
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