31st august 2004

pre-amble

I started a blog a couple of years ago. Then I ignored it for a while. Recently I started using it again, and I’ve just started a new blog too. All of which has got me into thinking about why. I might be re-treading some of the same ground as a previous essay (what is the point of this), but I think it’s interesting to explore both why we blog and where it might lead us.

an outlet

Blogs are an interesting thing. More instant than most other online or print-based activities, instantly available to a global audience they can function as anything from a travelogue to a diary to a news resource (a recent Guardian article pointed out how sites such as Reuters are looking increasingly more like blogs). But on a personal level there is the ever-present glaring question: why? Do people blog for exposure, for exhibitionism, for vanity, for legitimacy, to relieve boredom, to relieve loneliness… or simply because they can?

Returning to my earlier essay I wrote the following about blogs:

As an example of this [why we write] I’m particularly interested by blogging. I can never really be bothered to read many blogs, as with most things I am more excited by the idea than by the execution. The idea is fantastic though. Post articles online, cut out the marketing man, the money; the whole business of popularity and audience are irrelevant. Write what you want and upload it, put it out there where it can be viewed by anyone who looks for it, or stumbles across it. In practice much of this is boring, many of the more mundane blogs are simply online diaries and I am generally not particularly interested in reading what someone ate for breakfast or did at work. But that’s not the point, the point is they wanted to write it and they did. The point is that it is there for all to see, and why not? More than this, the best blogs, those that are more article or reportage based, can bring to the fore great writers who would never have had the opportunity to be published in the conventional sense. To a certain extent they create their own audience with use of diverse topics, interesting styles, ideas that we don’t see in print. There is no more point to all of this than anything else in life, but the fact that it’s out there enriches our culture as with all good writing.

I think the most telling point here is that the blog is there for all to see, for anyone who stumbles across it. It is not necessarily there specifically to appeal to a mass audience, it is written for the self but the fact that it has been uploaded to the internet means it also takes on a role of cultural enrichment. Regardless of whether it interests you as a reader, the fact that it is there creates a new opportunity to find something new and interesting, something which has no direct comparison in the off-line world. And for the writer, their thoughts take on a new power as they become part of this network of knowledge and experience (although there is the possibility that we’ll fill the internet with banal and poorly written tosh instead of a wealth of insight and beauty, the chance that this network of knowledge and experience will disintegrate into a quagmire of gossip and shit – a risk worth taking I hope). Again there is the likelihood that your blog will never be read much, but the fact that it is possible for it to be seen is already an interesting step onwards from a diary or notebook which is very much a private artefact, no matter how good the content.

One interesting point which I’ve been thinking of recently is the ability to have different blogs for different sides of your personality. My first blog was very much focussed on socio-political rants. Not determinedly serious, but certainly not a diary-style blog. I liked the idea of it because it was focussed on an area that might appeal to other readers and gave an opportunity to share views which would be stuck in my notebook without the blog. Additionally I find that I don’t actually talk about the news much to my friends. Reading the paper and mulling over the events of the day have always been primarily a solitary pursuit for me, mainly because I never feel able to adequately voice my view when debating the issues of the day. By writing these thoughts down, however, I’m able to think my arguments through and get a more coherent and eloquent point across. I was also aware, when starting the blog, of the access and cultural issues mentioned above. Although I wasn’t particularly writing it for anyone, it is a nice thought that anyone can view your opinions and share you thoughts if they happen across the blog. There is no particular reason why this is, but I suppose it is no different to the idea of the comment pieces in the paper: simply a way to share and debate life, an aspect of civilisation and cognition.

Moving on from this I’ve just started a new, more diary-style blog. Interestingly I wrote in the above quote that I didn’t find most online diaries that interesting. The thing that has changed here is that I have been reading the blogs of people I actually know, and suddenly these mundane diaries become much more interesting. Interesting because I care for the people I’m reading about, I want to know what they’ve been up to and because I feel like I’m getting to know them better through their text. Given this it is obvious that there’s a high probability of finding a random stranger’s blog a bit boring, but it’s also evident that this doesn’t mean there’s no value to it.

The other aspect of the more personal blog that appeals to me at the moment is the ability to use it as a creative space to hash out new ideas. I dabble in various forms of writing, but I’ve never really found an outlet for my fiction. Partly because it invariably never feels finished and often feels too self-conscious, and partly because most of it ends up being in the form of somewhat random and brief vignettes of life. This format is, however, quite feasible to use within the context of a blog. And the diary-like and temporal nature of the blog means it can also be used as a place to post work in progress and develop your ideas. In short, the posting of work is encouraging me to write and contemplate writing more, kicking me out of apathy, so there must be something in it!

encouraging continuity

My other problem of late seems to be the tendency to start new projects at the expense of continuing old ones. I think this comes down to the fact that it is satisfying to have a specific challenge for the day, and complete it successfully. With on-going projects it is often all too easy to feel directionless, to forget why you started it in the first place. More so is the time-scale involved. I still find it hard to continue projects over several days (invariably interspersed with the day job): I forget what I was doing, how far I got, how I did it. And if I don’t do a segment of a project which feels ‘finished’ during a given day I feel as though I have done nothing.

How does this relate to blogging? Well, I’ve noticed that the act of posting seems like a closure activity. Even (continuing the creative space theme from above) if you’re posting work-in-progress it feels like a declaration of completion, feels like something has actually been done and is now ‘out there’. This is not dissimilar from a work/project journal recording progress and targets, but the feeling of the blog as a separate entity brings added satisfaction and a sense of worth to the posting of the work. So, again, this is acting to encourage me to do more stuff by breaking up on-going projects into bite-size chunks that I can deal with, and by serving as an aide-memoir.

But we’ll have to wait and see if that still holds true in a month or two!

poignancy

Although not strictly the dictionary definition, I have a tendency to associate poignancy with everyday and banal events. By this I mean that it is often simple, daily things that bring on this transcendent feeling of sadness, but also similarly felt feelings of happiness and remembrance… the happy/sad divide is an interesting place. In terms of blogging this ability is revealed in both the collection of trivia and average events that collect over time, but also bestows added power to those extraordinary events which can change lives.

That all sounds a bit general; in personal terms I mean both something as trivial as a collection of bus tickets – which does so much to reflect the similarity and banality, yet immensity and possibility of each and every day – and a more focussed activity like the semi-fictional vignette. The reason these projects adept so well to the blog is that they both rely on immediacy and temporality; they work well in small doses administered often, the ideas strengthening and building over time. But they work less well as a sustained attack such as you would find with a book-based project. Thus the context that these activities are placed in within the blog serves to enhance the power of these kinds of art-form. The same is true even for the most basic diary-style blog. Again this is encouraging me to write more as the blog feels like the correct outlet for these kinds of projects, just as this website feels like the right outlet for these kinds of essays. And, apart, perhaps, from newspaper and magazine columns, there is not really a traditional equivalent to this outlet, and certainly nothing as democratic.

what next?

It’s an interesting question to ponder. I can see blogs combining with other web activities as blog segments are enmeshed with other content in websites and embedded into the fabric of web programming. For example, many sites use movable type (originally developed for blogging) for both forums and more extended articles and debates (for example, both the Seachange site and YAH arts site are mostly based on this principle, despite having quite different content and aims). There is also the inevitable rise of new media technologies as bandwidth increases and hardware costs fall. Examples of this include the new trend for moblogging (blogs from a mobile phone, often photo-based), and vlogging/mlogging (video/movie blogs, for example the absolutely amazing tropisms.org).

But these are present day developments… what about blogs in 10 years’ time? The Pepys diary project has been discussed in this context as the proprietor has made a commitment to see it through, which will take around 10 years (although there is still the issue of longevity in the digital world – a subject for another essay!). In this timeframe it is heartening to think that the form will still be with us and still relevant. After all, although the techniques used are old in a technological sense, culturally blogging is still very new. It still has the opportunity to become much more wide-spread and pervasive, something that easier to use blogging tools and cheaper technology will no doubt promote.

There is also the issue of desire, it is surely the case that not everyone is going to be interested in the medium, so I don’t think we’ll be hitting a future anytime soon when there is no division between people’s diaries and notepads and their blogs, although a future of pervasive computing (think Star Trek) would certainly make this a feasible concept. Or perhaps we’ll go through this phase then all crave privacy again and return to pen and paper. But this negates the essential aspect of the blog, it feels to me like a mediated private space: both private and personal, yet open and not at all vain or exhibitionist or voyeuristic. It doesn’t have the guilty feeling of reading someone’s diary, but does have the ability to give an outlet to these private thoughts if we so choose.

links

what does your soul look like (pt4) - creative/diary blog

falling down - ranting blog

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