Monday, January 21, 2008

ready, set...

1. Do I read blogs? Yes, I think so. I'll often waste time by going to Wired magazine or Slate.com (assuming that the content of each can be counted as blogs), but I don't read any of them regularly. More often I click on what looks interesting that particular day. I often find myself wondering who the heck all of these people are. On a different but related note, why would anyone want to read my own ramblings? That raises the question of who (beyond the class assignment-as-catalyst) am I writing for? Am I writing to hear other people's responses and enter into a conversation, or am I just writing to work through my own thoughts? If it's the latter, why am I doing this on the web? I journaled a lot while I was in the Peace Corps, why is blogging better than what I was doing overseas?

2. Setting up the blog was a piece of cake. The hardest part was trying to come up with something witty for a title, which didn't seem to work out anyway. I have no better reason for choosing 'blogger' than the fact that I already have a gmail account, and I just wanted to keep my number of accounts to a minimum.

3. I picked the template I did because I like the colors and boxes that section off and delineate the little bits of the blog. (I'm curious how much someone could glean about the blogger by analyzing her/his answers to these questions...)

4. Yes, writing here is different. It seems a bit like journaling, but in this odd way that other people will see it. It feels a little like "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" in the sense that I can say anything, but I don't have to be present for anyone's reactions. Also, I think I can distance myself more from the blog-as-text better than I could from tacking an essay up by the elevators in Curtain Hall. Maybe here there's more freedom because the accessibility creates less legitimacy... maybe there's more legitimacy because there are less filters on the results. Obviously, I'm a novice, but I'm cautiously curious about where all this will lead.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Andy, you've started blogging about blogging, very clever! I suppose thats a natural place start. I'm happy to see that you've enable comments, you're only as anonymous as blog comment snipers let you be. A few snarky rebuffs can eliminate that "behind the curtain" feeling.
So it looks like this post is written as a response to some questions. Let me pose another: Should everyone have their own blog? I'm tempted to say yes, documenting one's ideas and thoughts in written form is what helps clarify. Still, I worry about blog over proliferation, in the same way I worry about buying vitamins in too-big bottles. I'll never get through what i really need before the fresh date expires. Its true, i worry about bottles of vitamins, so keep that in mind when you're deciding how cred to give my comment.

Mathilda said...

Andy, I found it interesting that you said, "accessibility creates less legitimacy." With the other half of my degree being in library science and information studies, we are ALL about accessibility. In fact, there I would be hard-pressed to find a person who would say that accessibility didn't create MORE legitimacy. Allowing people access to information is important! Protecting them from it, or censoring them, or...however you want to work that in regards to your ramblings on the web is dangerous. At least in the information studies world. ;)

Sarah Freese
http://iheartya.wordpress.com

Andy Engel said...

Sarah, hmm... Interesting point. However, I think you misquoted what I was saying, and probably I didn't develop it enough either. The phrase you're quoting is the first of a two part question, where, in the second part, I basically say what you said. Maybe my deeper interest is about processing the multitudes of information, blogs, etc that are now "accessible" on the web. Yes, access it paramount, I am loath to suggest otherwise. But how then do we interpret this information when anyone anywhere can post it. Do we only listen to the New York Times bloggers? Do we abandon them and only listen to grad students? It puts more of the onus on us as consumers as the accessibility of everything increases to discover a way of not being lost among so much at our fingertips.