Blogtrax

Originally uploaded by krissie p.

My blog is watching me, staring out from the screen at me, and just the other side through the darkness of the pupil, visitors peer in at me. Somehow, perhaps because these blogs are adrift in a sea of millions we can probably guess (or even hope) who may float by, but photo-sharing lets more light in. The visits are upfront. Complete strangers look in, comment and borrow images. I’ve had my eye on this one for about a week; it haunts me. Now on Blogtrax it has been levered out of Flickr space, appropriated, and repurposed in this meta-world.

Reading Don Leu (Handbook of Reading Research, Vol.3) made me think about how the publish-as-you-go literacy research that is at the heart of Blogtrax had a further rationale. Here’s Don:

Since literacy is so intimately related to the technologies of informtion and communication as well as the envisionments they inspire, rapidly changing technologies make it difficult, if not impossible to develop a consistent body of research within traditional forums before the technology on which it is based is replaced by an even newer technology. Unless this situation changes, and strategies for publishing research in traditional forums speed up their processes or new forums appear, it is likely that traditional research will play an increasingly less important role in our understanding of new technologies and new literacies.

I was thinking about writing in the public domain, and how mine is mostly hidden between the covers of books and journals in formats which assume a certain kind of readership and address relatively narrow concerns. I don’t think I have much else in the public domain (although there’s plenty of everyday writing for private, interpersonal or closed groups). So, blogging is another dimension altogether. And it’s not really about staring at a blank page, or breaking a long silence, but more like adding a piece to a kaleidoscope of ongoing patterns. Nevertheless there still is a sense in which you are sticking your neck out, gaining public space.

Dr Joolz said that to blog is to be brave. I chuckled at the time, thinking perhaps it was just her way of putting things, but on reflection she’s right. Sticking your neck out is brave (although the consequences are unlikely to be guillotining!. It’s particularly brave when you broach sensitive or new topics. Dr Joolz’s disclosure (15 March) is like that, I think. That’s brave and that’s going public in a really interesting way. I mean where else could you write something like that?

Middle Earth Duck Pond
Originally uploaded by BobJack.

My ephemeral digital posts lengthen with time, expanding with a confidence to say new things, and garnished with a certain recklessness. More involvement with an online community of bloggers, readers (both known and unknown), and Flickr-sharers is a causal factor, put together with an increase in blog consumption. So my/our blogs evolve, including this one, as we develop heteronymic works, discover new voices, new ideas and new skills.

Dr Joolz has talked about the kind of osmotic learning that takes place around blogging: a bit of html, the subtle art of tagging and so on. Recently, I’ve been wanting to index my posts but found the Blogger advice too dense. Easy to get lost in the hinterland of geek technology. Then I got into Blogstreet, attracted to the neighbourhood/proximity concept, but I find I’m out of my depth there too. And most recently of all I’ve been looking at RSS feeds but can’t quite grasp how they work, or even if I’d have the time or energy to engage with them.

Is this technological hinterland a place to colonise, or is it best left alone if all you’re interested in is the writing? The trouble is the writing itself and the technology to write subtley infuse one another. Perhaps, to be lost in the hinterland is to wish for a map.

Flickr has really started to capture my interest. Although I’ve assiduously resisted the temptation to add a site meter to my blog, in Flickr the views/comments option is default. I’ve left it on, so I’ve become quite stoical about my unpopular gallery of images - averaging around 4/5 views each. Imagine then my excitement about interest in Ruth’s Arabic tattoo. I’ve already noted how it drew more than the usual 0 comments on my blog (!), but on my Flickr, the first tattoo is now up to 34 views! Tagging it tattoo and skinart obviously appeals to a segment of the Flickr audience. Yesterday, I uploaded the third in a series of these tattoo pictures and I was quite amazed to find that the image had 3 views before I even saw it published, and then 9 views in the first 7 minutes (I even noted that on the pic itself, such was my excitement). But then maybe Flickr is a tricker - note I have complete faith in these counts and automatically assume that the huge world wide readership is beating a path to my blog as well. Of course, not! Yet the Flickr viewings are interesting - just assuming that the stats are accurate, those first eager visitors were co-present in the Flickr space, and remain unknown readers, unless, of course, they leave an identifying comment. The same then, at least in theory, in my blogspace where I am present (in various senses of the word), where I must be at least somewhere in the popularity stakes, and I do have unknown readers. So, I was so shocked to be taken seriously here, that I emailed Joolz almost right away, like the child I am :blush: I mean really boasting
{ O }. Yet, in the cold light of day, with a greater sense of objectivity, it’s really good that an unknown reader can take you seriously (or laugh with you, if that’s what you want).

Is blogging infradig, I wonder? Both Dr Joolz and TT go quiet this weekend and I have to resort to putting new material on Multimodal Matters just so I don’t feel alone! Just imagine if you were stranded in cyberspace - cut adrift. But no, Michele is posting so it’s OK. And so are all those on my B-list (ah yes, as I noted before, they’re not really in my affinity space but they are worth keeping an eye on). I have a new piece by Torill Mortensen (from the Blogosphere), and then there’s this, another rather jounalistic piece on blogging.

I’ve been online most of today, so the post over on my blog is rather serious and reflects on what I’ve trawled through today. Now it’s getting so I can’t post without an image. And that’s not just because of a TT comment, it just doesn’t really look quite right. I can do an image-less day but that’s about all. Maybe the old text-only posts have become vieux jeu, but then my French is rubbish, so I’m probably wrong.

So, the farshah post (3 March) on my blog drew some comment - that was interesting, but consider my surprise when the image went ’straight to number one’ with 29 hits on my Flickr! That’s probably the way I tagged it (Lady Sovereign’s pretty popular, too!). Reflecting on this made me do a double-take. I’ve been trying to keep the focus on the blog and the blogging itself, but when you actually pick it up for inspection, you find it’s interlaced with so many other experiences, interactions and media. An intricate web of technologies. So Ruth sent me the photo-message of her tattoo. I emailed her to check out if it was OK to post it. She got back saying that was ‘cool’. I uploaded the image on to Flickr and then the rest is history (of course, in doing this I superimposed my own reading, but that’s not really the point). I’m thinking of the intricate web of mobile phone; email; Flickr; Blogger and ensuing comment. But even that doesn’t quite capture it - it’s too linear, because as I’m rather slowly and perhaps a little reluctantly discovering Flickr is a dynamic world in itself. Through tagging that image becomes part of the affinity-based folksonomy of the Flickr social world. Is Flickr in the study? I’m not sure any more. Well, I only have a handful of photos there and I’ve rather belatedly added TT and DrJ as contacts - I’m not sure I have the energy to engage with a new social network, but at the same time feel a bit awkward standing there, with only a couple of friends and this picture-sharing party going on all around me! I didn’t initially see my blog as a visual space at all - I was persuaded because it looked drab against others I was visiting, and, on a more theory-driven note, I was aware of the need to explore the affordances. At the moment it seems that the autoethnographic focus remains in tact, but the borderlands are rich and interesting and must not be neglected.

I should be working but I’m blogging. Why’s that? Must be more fun I guess. I’ve just been cruising around checking everyone’s recent postings, reading comments, checking my Flickr (Oh! someone else likes Marcel!). There’s two things here. One is that the workspace is the same, so its dead easy just to rattle off a few emails and then - in that liminal space between tasks - pull down the bookmark and you’re in. And of course, one’s own blog is a portal, a rabbit hole to an intertextual wonderland and then you’re gone, time has slipped, you’re in flow, lost in third space, safe in your own heterotopia. This is loaded with references to a shared discourse! The other, the second, is the sense that it’s more fun, less constrained, open-ended, even creative…and playfully interactive (see italicised text above). You’re hanging out with your friends, they make you laugh, you’re curious about what they blogged, they make you think, they nourish the blogger within.

So my guilt, here, is that this escape to Blogland is about avoiding what needs doing. It’s blogging as skiving, slacking off, loosing it. What will become of me? I’ll be a blog-junkie a hopelessly addicted cyberflaneur. OR….I’ll somehow be lost to my online identities, as the dracula cyberworld takes me over. I’m reminded of Borges, who writes about being taken over in the following.

…news of Borges reaches me by mail, or I see his name on a list of academics or in some biographical dictionary. My tastes run to hourglasses, maps, eighteenth century typefaces, etymologies, the taste of coffee, and the prose of Robert Louis Stevenson; Borges shares those preferences, but in a vain sort of way that turns them into the accoutrements of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that our relationship is hostile - I live, I allow myself to live, so that Borges can spin out his literature……Little by little, I have been turning everything over to him…

Borges and I (from The Maker, 1960)

Confession: I often wake up thinking about my blog! It can really take hold when I’m in the shower. It’s almost like blogthoughts have invaded the water system and enter my brain via the showerhead! But I rarely blog these thoughts, mostly I’m a late afternoon/early evening blogger when I’m settling on some of the notable (ie blogable/blogworthy thoughts and things of the day). It’s all charmingly transient though, because the posts quickly become history and, let’s face it, who spends time reading archives? Maybe some people do (maybe we should check that out) - I don’t unless there’s a link. Who wants history when today’s news is breaking? So when a blog’s sleeping (like Colin and Michele’s did) there’s some disappointment, and when it wakes it can be quite a pleasant surprise. That’s the nowness and the newness of blogs. I like reading ones that regularly update.

Do I ever read archives? Well, not very much at all. Maybe when I stumble on a new one, maybe then - but usually there’s enough on a page to get the measure of it/them. OK, so that’s a bit of history, but it’s not a thorough-going trawl through the archives. I have a kind of B-list of blogs - one’s I keep an eye on from tme to time with a view to maybe linking to them in the future, but again that’s very much the case of checking them out every so often. The other day I started thinking about that dead stuff buried in my archives and thought how good it could be to categorise or reference it (some bloggers do this sort of thing). The only trouble is that that starts to superimpose themes, whereas there’s something organic - no don’t like that word- chancy even exciting about overlapping ideas. For example, I had a sort of layering of footsteps/tracks/weather/space and place going on last week. Didn’t get many comments, so it was probably total crap, but it was just interesting and real how the ideas became a sort of collage.

That overlapping and juxtaposition of ideas is a sort of creative process (not wishing to make grand claims for my humble blog). The archives then become like sketches, workings-out, think-pieces maybe informing something ‘larger’ or maybe just dying away. So, in the end, I think most of it really is just history, although I mustn’t forget that I do sometimes put in reminders and references to check out later. Like this, today’s thoughts - part of a developing tapestry of ideas or just some stuff waiting on this page to become history?