Why we blog
So what is it all about then? What's this blogging thing meant to do?
OK. I know it's a dumb question.
We do it because we want to.
Because we can. (Thank you Blogger & Blogspot, btw).
Because we should (well, maybe)
Because we do.
Clearly a lot of these things are driven by vanity. Mine included, I guess. Keeping a public journal is a weird thing - nervous that someone you admire might read it and be unimpressed; equally nervous that no one will bother to read it.
I read somewhere that the 'blog phenomenon is simply another manifestation of the basic drive to “find oneself”. Friend of mine said a funny thing about this idea – “What’s with this need to find yourself? When were you mislaid?” Or something like that. Seemed funny at the time. Guess you had to be there.
Maybe it has a lot to do with what the extraordinary David Weinberger was hitting on in his oft-quoted piece on “The Longing”
All of what David says is well informed. Most of what he says is truly brilliant. A good deal of what he has to say, including this piece, is genuinely important - in ways I'm not sure I even have the capacity to define. If for any reason you haven't caught Dr. Weinberger's gig yet, you have to check it out at: Journal of the Hyperlinked Organisation
"Our culture's pulse is pounding with the Web." Yes. Of course.
David wrote this ages ago, but it still rings in my head:
"The memo is dead. Long live email. The corporate newsletter is dead. Long live racks of 'zines from individuals who do not speak for the corporation. Bland, safe relationships with customers are dead. Long live customer support reps who are willing to get as pissed off at their own company as the angry customer is.
"We are so desperate to have our voices back that we are willing to leap into the void. We embrace the Web not knowing what it is, but hoping that it will burn the org chart — if not the organisation — down to the ground. Released from the gray flannel handcuffs, we say anything, curse like sailors, rhyme like bad poets, flame against our own values, just for the pure delight of having a voice.
And when the thrill of hearing ourselves speak again wears off, we will begin to build a new world.
That is what the Web is for."
Perhaps we blog as an interim step - it's a necessary evolutionary watershed before we knuckle down and begin to build our new world properly - now that we've started to get the first widespread sense of what works, what doesn't - what's acceptable and what is to be ignored. What the traffic will allow. Blogging may be "the thrill of hearing ourselves speak again"++
Or it could all be bollocks. There's a half-thought rattling around about the similarities between blogging and the uploading movement. A desire for permanence. Something.
