A student in Indiana State University’s Center for Biological Computing makes it quite clear in an extended and profane — but engaging — piece of writing why he or she really doesn’t like personal weblogs. While I don’t agree with the student’s points, and wince to see that much anger, I do share the concern that some weblogs do become little more than vehicles for the author’s vanity. At the same time, even that seems to me somehow worthwhile, especially if it helps build a community. I’m happy to see the brilliant Curtiss back from hiatus, but on this topic, he takes quite a different stance from mine, adamantly refusing to ground his positions “on value or personal sentiment“: is this a good idea when discussing matters political? Or simply a different mode of writing? The ISU student in question offers an amusingly vituperative Statement of Audience at the end that inadvertently does a wonderful job of connecting concerns about audience to James Britton’s useful (if now somewhat out of fashion) category of expressive (as opposed to transactional or poetic) discourse. Could Britton’s work help one develop a taxonomy of weblogs that might help the ISU student to be a little less concerned? How do teachers and students construct the purposes of weblogs, in and out of school?
Some navel-gazing of my own: this place serves several functions for me. The reason I started it was to give myself a public reason for working regularly on concerns associated with my dissertation, but it’s also become something to look forward to, both in terms of the writing and in terms of the responses and interaction. Such an observation is rather obvious, but it also points back towards the question: do weblogs do things other than the uses their writers set them to? In other words, if I want to use this weblog solely for self-indulgent artsy-fartsy pretentious navel-gazing vanity noodling (and of course you know I do: isn’t it obvious?), can it have other values beyond that? Of course. Such a question brings me back to the value problem Curtiss has remarked on before: most economic theories think of utility as something being always somehow individual, and yet solve it that problem of individual utility with the conversion to the universality of money and the collectivity of the invisible hand.
There’s got to be some way to navigate between those two extremes in thinking about the value of intellectual labor.
(Cross-posted in slightly different form at Kairosnews; first link via Metafilter.)
I found it surprising that the ISU student is _so_ deeply bothered by blogs. Beyond the impressive energy of the rant, however, I read it as a plea for centering social-tech phenomena on a shared, explicit purpose. A similar buzz erupts when somebody whines about indiscrete cell phone use in public (driving with two hands on the phone may be another matter altogether). I’m thinking of the empty chatter and ringing that increasingly disturbs seemingly dedicated public spaces. In other words, by disturbance, opinions are shaped and reinforced about appropriate uses of the technology.
So I’m not any more bothered by the spill of divergence in blogland than I am concerned about peoples’ predilection for WWF wrestling or different tastes in pie. If anything, the divergence is a sign that blogs linger in a freer discursive space than any previous writer/audience interaction (excepting epistles, maybe), unabated by strict rules of form and function. Guess that’s why I think blogs have great potential for enhancing comp/rhet pedagogy and why I’ve taken to blogging myself. It’s a terrific way to sustain an exploratory writing habit.
BTW, as a prospective future dissertator (got eight apps out, fingers crossed) I’m learning a lot by following your blog. You should know it’s serving that purpose.
Yeah, there’s something in the blurred public space/private space dimensions of blogs that may create a sense of specific appropriateness for some writers.
When I was first teaching a hybrid class that included a listserv, 3 or 4 students resisted participating and in course evaluations complained about email from class that showed up in what they regarded as personal space. This is hardly typical, but I was caught off guard by the response. It may be that some younger people have personalized the technology in specific ways, and they regard other uses as a personal affront.
Just thinking outloud here.
Interesting point, Derek, about violations of expectations shaping new thoughts about how to use technology. But I think it doesn’t always have to be a purpose, or even explicit, because that feels to me like it points back towards thinking about technology always as the object of the rational human actor-as-subject, back towards the old instrumental relationship — and that’s where your anecdote about the listserv comes in, John; it’s not just the uses of technology, it’s the socialization it involves, and the way it affects our selves, our values, our communities in ways that economists might not think of as being strictly utility-based.
Short reply: while emotional responses are a factor in forming ethical judgements, I don’t think they should (is that an emotive “should” or a cognitive “should”? Only my h&irdresser knows for sure….) be the bedrock of ethical judgements. In analytic-phil-speak, I’m not an emotivist.
In fact, I’ll even go as far as to say that emotion and personal experience have been underrated as factors in making ethical and political judgements. Do I support the statement, “The personal is political?” You bet–but I think there’s an excellent argument to be made for the current and continuing relevance of that statement.
Finally, thanks very much for your kind and generous appraisal of my work. I’m afraid I haven’t done much recently to support it, though. But a fuller response to your question is something that’ll be forthcoming.
BTW–do you have MT-Blacklist installed? I had to write h&irdresser instead of…
Re mt-blacklist — Indeed I do. After a flurry of ph3ntermine / vi&gra / .de / pr0n comment spam (like, a lot every day), I’d installed it and imported a couple other peoples’ blacklists, and should have checked them more carefully — turns out “hair” is a dirty word. No longer, and I’ll proofread the 840-item list tomorrow. Just don’t ask me about any URLs with vicodin, hentai, or vioxx in them, please. And, again — glad to see you back.