To Blog or Not to Blog?

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To Blog or Not to Blog?

• Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
• Assistant Professor of English
• MITH Digital Dialogues
• May 6, 2003

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Hello World

• A foot of snow and counting here in DC. Wind
  picking up, not much visibility looking out over
  Rock Creek Park. Spent a few hours this afternoon
  getting this blog up and running.
• Posted by mgk at February 16, 2003 0337 PM

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Strictly speaking . . .

• . . . a blog is a Web log a regularly updated
  online journal consisting of (relatively) short
  posts or entries by the blogs owner/author.

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But blogs also . . .

• . . . represent the next stage in the evolution
  of the personal homepage (Justins Links).

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Ultimately, blogs are . . .

• . . . self-organizing discourse networks that
  are reclaiming the Web from exclusively corporate
  interests via advanced indexing, syndication, and
  linking technologies.

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Blag

• My colleague Bill Sherman informs me that blog
  is suspiciously close to "blag," British slang
  for "talking at length and with authority about
  something you don't know anything about." Hmm.
• Posted by mgk at February 21, 2003 0558 PM

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Blogging Tools

• Slash (Slashdot)
• GreyMatter
• Blogger
• LiveJournal
• Manila (Radio UserLand)
• Tinderbox (Eastgate)
• Movable Type

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Movable Type

• Free (donation suggested)
• Customizable stylesheets (CSS)
• Local installation
• An account on a webserver that allows you to run
  custom CGI scripts.
• Perl, version 5.004_04 or greater, installed on
  this webserver.
• Support for the DB_File Perl module OR MySQL
  DBDmysql
• Trackback
• Really an entire Web publishing system

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Vox

• Blogging requires a new voice, and new rhythms,
  routines, cycles. I guess I'll work on it.
• Posted by mgk at February 16, 2003
• 0841PM

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The Blogosphere

• BlogRolling
• Blogdex
• Blog Ecologies
• Blogshares
• AllConsuming

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New Standards

• Trackback
• RSS (an example)
• Creative Commons

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Will Blogs Kill Listserv?

• Earlier I had said, none too originally, that
  the blog seems to represent the next stage of
  evolution for the personal homepage. I still
  think that's true, but my recent immersion in
  blogging has also brought home to me the
  importance of feedback, interaction,
  multi-directionality. You post and then wait for
  comments and trackbacks. You log on in the
  morning and look at your blogroll to see who's
  updated. It seems to me that blogs are filling
  the vacuum created by the demise of many listserv
  discussion groups, at least in those corners of
  the academic world I inhabit. Conversations that
  would have once taken place on list have moved to
  the blogosphere, which functions as a richer,
  more granular, and--this is what's most
  important--self-organizing discourse network.
• Posted by mgk at March 3, 2003 1146 PM

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Warblogging (the real embedding)

• Warblogscc
• The Agonist
• Instapundit
• Cursor
• Salam Pax

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Social Software

• Many-to-Many
• Wikis
• MMRPGs

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Why I Blog

• To have a voice in my research community
• To organize links and ideas
• To communicate with students
• To write more often than I might
• To try out new technologies