1.Originally, I started keeping a blog to see what it would be like to write something that would appear online. Having written about others and their online interactions, I wanted to know if I was right in some of my assumptions. I admired what I was looking at and wanted to do it too.
2. I find writing helps me to think through some of my ideas and I like the discipline of writing regualarly - however busy my day is with other things… I try to force myself to write daily.
3. I like the hybrid nature of the writing - it is part work and part play. As Anya said, something about boundary shifting. I think it is true that the boundaries of work/play merge for most academics and their inability to to distinguish is reflected in the blogs of many academics I think. Thanks to Anya for this insight.
4. I like the public/private tension of the space.
5. Writing helps me develop my ideas and I write them in my blog in a semi formed state; not ready for peer review as such, but open for peer commentary.
5. I like being part of an affinity space. This space is slightly uncertain as it is transitory to a degree and I am not quite sure where its boundaries are.
6. I like taking things from my meatspace experiences and rearranging them in cyberspace to look at as new text, s a narrative of sorts. These reconstructions come in the the form of digital images I take with my camera; words on the web-page that narrate aspects of my life; hyperlinks to show places I have been, things I have read, etc.
7. I like being part of digital culture network; I like the interaction.
8. I like producing texts that have hyperlinks and that have a range of modalities; it seems important as a cultural develoment and I want to be part of it.
9. I think this is a new form of writing and I want to research it.
10. I can communicate with people I know and people I do not know; I like not quite being sure who is reading.
Apologies that this post repeats a lot of what has gone before … but that is the nature of developing ideas and learning… it is circuitous.
A very interesting post. You have put precisely into words some things I have felt yet have never considered exactly what I like about the blogging culture, and indeed the benefits and draw backs.
I’m also amazed you even have Anya as a blogging subject! I can see her now blushing haha
Comment by Chris Best — June 5, 2005 @ 5:52 pm
Oooh good am pleased you think this speaks for you too … Yes Anya comes into my blogosphere so often she needs to be a keyword!! She is influential on me really.
Just looked at your blog. I love Berlin, very exciting, happening city. But very sorry to hear of your bad experience with the camera.
Comment by blogtrax — June 5, 2005 @ 6:54 pm
Hey! *Ahem*! *cough* I go off for a few days and come back and see this! *laugh* I was amazed too Chris. Actually it’s a fascinating way of categorising posts, to categorise them by people. DrJoolz is the first person I know to do this!! I am shocked to see my name in a list of categories that also includes Foucault and de Certeau. It made me feel very important! And I guess that leads to thinking for me about another reason I like blogging: it gives me a space to have a voice and to be heard, something I DON’T have in my very huge faculty where I am simply a junior colleague, a nobody. But here I do feel like what I say is attended to at least some of the time, thanks to you two :>
Comment by Anya — June 6, 2005 @ 3:25 am