The Internet for me, has changed in a rather fundamental way over the last few years, and, in particular, the last few months. It’s become more about people and relationships, and less about hardware and software than ever before. In times of personal bleakness, it has been a friend and way to reach out to people and find out that I really am not alone. There are other people out there who like to share their lives, their stories, situations and experiences with complete and utter strangers.
Personal publishing has really expanded to include anyone who has anything to say. It’s a vehicle for expressing our very basic human rights to free speech. I think this is the main reason why I like blogging so much. There might be a lot of crap pumped into the electronic world on a daily basis, but it’s up to me to define and decide what is crap and what is good and what I want to read. I can decide to click on a link to check for my friends’ updates every day. And those friendships might not be mutual…I read blogs whose writers do not read mine. While this isn’t really that different than reading a book whose author doesn’t read my book, the Internet and blogs are constantly evolving, changing, becoming more or less relevant to my personal circumstances, and I can use it to my advantage whenever I like. It’s less a reference tool and more a creative tool than I ever realized.
I ask myself often why it is I blog, and I guess it’s just because it’s reassuring to know that I am leaving my electronic footprint on the virtual world. And maybe that I made the odd person laugh, even if just for a minute. If I vanished tomorrow there would be some evidence I existed, that I had feelings and experiences and struggled, just like everyone else. It’s an expression of my humanity, in a little, humble way. I think that’s reason enough.
I begin my musing with the question of what makes a web-log different from a standard diary or journal and how the essence of what is produced might differ from such items.
As with journals, there are definitely different types of blogs. While many seem to be daily notations thrown up for the satisfaction of their writers and perhaps a few of their friends, it is interesting to look at some of the more far-reaching creations and think a bit about how the use of the computer interface affects style and especially content.
Certainly hand-written journaling has a long history and there have always been less or more adept, less or more interesting writers, less and more public access to these “writings”. Journals can and have also been more than just written chronicles often including drawings, paintings, and sundry memorabilia (ticket stubs, pressed flowers, locks of hair.)
What makes web-logging different from previous written journals is perhaps the immediate access of these mixed media to a large public and the possibility for that public to interact with the writer/artist. I have noticed also that the majority of blogs that seem to have philosophical and critical content are produced by teachers or academics of one sort or another.
Perhaps this is not so surprising since, schools and universities have been quick to jump on computer bandwagons and tend to stay on top of technical innovations. I think however that there is at least one other additional reason for this coincidence.
In my own personal opinion, the most interesting blogs combine the elements of memoir (being focused thoughtful or emotional considerations of events or people) with the opportunities of modern technology – the possibilities of instantaneous public interaction. They work as a forum that allows for support and intercourse for those working in intellectually or artistically exploratory areas. In this respect, they may well offer an antidote to a problem that I have been observing for some time now – the increasing isolation and splintering off of the individual from the group (and particularly of the creative and intellectual individual). This may seem like a tangent at first but be patient with my argument as it is being built.
As universities and colleges have become more and more democratized, the community of artists and scholars has become more and more dispersed and the belief in the values of their work has been diminished. This occurs from a desire to make the world and our communities a better place. It is a natural progression that as one seeks to improve the education of the masses, that the expectations of what a University or College prep degree will offer will change. When the university was a place for the elite to school the elect, (and produce the well-rounded individual in the form of Castiglione’s Renaissance “man”, the Courtier) then it was possible to have institutions that supported education in the things that made the culture great. These days, as we introduce more and more people who do not have guaranteed or preplanned roles in state and the professions to the ideas of academia, the question for those individuals becomes not what does it mean to be a well-rounded individual, but how is (any of) this going to help me with my future life – how is this going to help me with a job.
Academia, while having done a good job of insisting that education is important and should be available to all, has done a poor job of publicising the importance of the ability to think flexibly, of the value of knowing about history and philosophy and of having an appreciation for the arts (despite the fact that all of these things make for a more versatile person who is a better worker and world citizen.) This means that it has attracted more and more students, become larger and larger and lost one of its very important foci, that of creating communities for scholars and artists that preserve and critique the bases of culture.
Academies have grown and introduced new “more practical” curricula, hiring a diverse variety of lecturers and professors and thus the once small supportive ivory tower communities became diluted with nursing, management, and technical area staff. To differentiate oneself from the droves of other faculty (as the numbers of attendees increased), it became necessary for teachers to become authorities in a particular field and with so many others in the field, it became necessary to specialize in increasingly ridiculous and narrow areas. Teachers went from studying broad fields of understanding to immersing themselves in highly technical and specialized ones. The model of the Renaissance “man” was all but lost to the academy along with the ability to interact with and find others with similar issues and interests.
In short, thinkers find it harder and harder to find each other and find meaningful interaction with others.
The web-log offers the possibility of those intellectually isolated artists and thinkers to explore broader areas and find others who have similar interests or who have interests in taking up the discussion of such interests. This of course goes for other groups who are feeling isolated too. On a broader level, what we see in the weblog is the possibility of a kind of intentional community – solving the problem of Marshall McLuhan’s global village a bit, by offering (two-way) communication that is instantaneous in bridging space and time and gratifying. In short I blog because I have the opportunity to send out ideas and interact with others about them in a wide variety of media and areas. As an intellectual loner(Huhaaaa...I am a mad intellectual), I have been given for the first time the opportunity to become a member of a meaningful community.
