top 10 reasons I don't blog anymore
thinking about what to say and show for liz losh's panel discussion on blogs at UCI today, I decided to pull together a few of the major reasons that led to the end of this blog, distraction economy. (add to this list that I thought I'd blog this list before going into the lecture hall, and then tech glitches prevented that and I got to the panel late...) I look forward to a podcast of this panel, or even a youtube appearance.
10. stats: I had been blogging here since March 2004, and elsewhere before that. but then I gave my wife a couple of domain names and hosted her blog on my server, and while my blog gets decent statistics, her blog outdoes me on all metrics (visits, pages, volume, geographic diversity) by a factor of 2-3 (for details, click here and here...)
9. quality: how can I expect good writing from students, or for that matter from newspapers and websites, if I don't practice it myself? blogs, organized about regular fast updates and quirky (or snarky) comments, are not too conducive to well-wrought phrasing. I need to ease the pain on my prose.
8. africa: as I wrote just recently, I spent two months in africa, and felt that it would have been both pretentious and technically challenging to try and keep up a daily post from there. the digital divide, here and abroad, is quite real still.
7. eternal update: I did not want this to become the default answer to that dreaded and yet desired question, "so what are you working on now?" - I realized that even though a lot of the stuff I posted about here was directly related to my teaching and writing, there was also a lot of my work that does not show up on this blog. it started as a daily repository for fun facts and interesting academic stuff, and at some point I knew I was going to write this stuff up more seriously.
6. citizen journalism: when, for once, I had something newsworthy on my blog, I was actually yelled at by my (former) dean. it was a post related to my work on derrida and archives, and the derrida archives. it made national newspapers. it made colleagues mad. and it made me want to stop blogging, since I learned a hard lesson about the realities of academic freedom, censorship, and self-censorship. of course I also went ahead and wrote on the derrida archive for an academic venue.
5. crackberry style: much of my academic administrative work is done with the aid of this gadget, and much of my non-academic life also flows through it. as a consequence, I no longer carry my laptop everywhere. (I'm also re-training myself in how to keep the gizmos in my pocket and just listen to people, whether in class, at conferences, or while travelling). I don't like to blog on the blackberry. it's great for quick email and text messaging, for updating and checking my calendar. it's not a good writing instrument.
4. henry jenkins: among my many disagreements with what his work on fans, gamers, and bloggers stands for, my dissatisfaction with the dismal and misleading "user-generated content" paradigm is by far the biggest bone to pick.
3. monobrow: deflating the social media hype, the most recent book by geert lovink takes aim at the blogosphere, and I should copy page after page from his book zero comments: blogging and critical internet culture into this post. except - well, blogs don't do that. one of their problematic symptoms: not enough time and space for real sustained argument. at least some other so-called "web 2.0" formats are somewhat less reductive.
2. oINK oINK: as I blogged here long ago, I really kind of hate bOiNG bOiNG, the bloggingest of all blogs. you might argue that blog criticism must join the ranks of bloggers if it hopes to reach bloggers, but I am ready to explore other means.
1. and finally, and most emphatically, top 10 lists suck. most blogs are merely listing the cool obscure. the lossy compression of thoughts and reactions to lists and rankings is one of the primary faults of blog culture: every good text is a list, but not every list is a good text.
10. stats: I had been blogging here since March 2004, and elsewhere before that. but then I gave my wife a couple of domain names and hosted her blog on my server, and while my blog gets decent statistics, her blog outdoes me on all metrics (visits, pages, volume, geographic diversity) by a factor of 2-3 (for details, click here and here...)
9. quality: how can I expect good writing from students, or for that matter from newspapers and websites, if I don't practice it myself? blogs, organized about regular fast updates and quirky (or snarky) comments, are not too conducive to well-wrought phrasing. I need to ease the pain on my prose.
8. africa: as I wrote just recently, I spent two months in africa, and felt that it would have been both pretentious and technically challenging to try and keep up a daily post from there. the digital divide, here and abroad, is quite real still.
7. eternal update: I did not want this to become the default answer to that dreaded and yet desired question, "so what are you working on now?" - I realized that even though a lot of the stuff I posted about here was directly related to my teaching and writing, there was also a lot of my work that does not show up on this blog. it started as a daily repository for fun facts and interesting academic stuff, and at some point I knew I was going to write this stuff up more seriously.
6. citizen journalism: when, for once, I had something newsworthy on my blog, I was actually yelled at by my (former) dean. it was a post related to my work on derrida and archives, and the derrida archives. it made national newspapers. it made colleagues mad. and it made me want to stop blogging, since I learned a hard lesson about the realities of academic freedom, censorship, and self-censorship. of course I also went ahead and wrote on the derrida archive for an academic venue.
5. crackberry style: much of my academic administrative work is done with the aid of this gadget, and much of my non-academic life also flows through it. as a consequence, I no longer carry my laptop everywhere. (I'm also re-training myself in how to keep the gizmos in my pocket and just listen to people, whether in class, at conferences, or while travelling). I don't like to blog on the blackberry. it's great for quick email and text messaging, for updating and checking my calendar. it's not a good writing instrument.
4. henry jenkins: among my many disagreements with what his work on fans, gamers, and bloggers stands for, my dissatisfaction with the dismal and misleading "user-generated content" paradigm is by far the biggest bone to pick.
3. monobrow: deflating the social media hype, the most recent book by geert lovink takes aim at the blogosphere, and I should copy page after page from his book zero comments: blogging and critical internet culture into this post. except - well, blogs don't do that. one of their problematic symptoms: not enough time and space for real sustained argument. at least some other so-called "web 2.0" formats are somewhat less reductive.
2. oINK oINK: as I blogged here long ago, I really kind of hate bOiNG bOiNG, the bloggingest of all blogs. you might argue that blog criticism must join the ranks of bloggers if it hopes to reach bloggers, but I am ready to explore other means.
1. and finally, and most emphatically, top 10 lists suck. most blogs are merely listing the cool obscure. the lossy compression of thoughts and reactions to lists and rankings is one of the primary faults of blog culture: every good text is a list, but not every list is a good text.
Labels: thought
posted by dr_k at 10:00 AM
