Blogtrax

I’ve just finished reading Siri Hustvedt’s novel ‘The Blindlfold’. Not surprisingly it’s all about identity and identity shifts, dislocation etc etc. But there’s one part that really stands out for me. The main character has just assumed an identity which involves adopting another name - a fictionalised identity. One of this character’s confidantes claims that ‘Fiction is not like life.’ - fair enough - but the response is brilliant, I’m sure I’ll use it as a quote sometime:

You know as well as I do that the line can’t be drawn, that we’re infected at every moment by fictions of all kinds, that it’s inescapable.

So I’m now pre-occupied by that phrase ‘ infected at every moment by fictions’. Of course the suggestion of disease or infection seems to carry a value judgement, but the nonetheless it also makes us see how the fictions we consume and the fictions we live by influence our self-narrative. Perhaps also the most severe forms of political oppression are achieved by innoculating the populace with dangerous fictions.

I was interested to have a link to this blog left in a comment to my last post here on Blogtrax. left, in fact, by someone who is using blogs with her Y9 class, using it for self assessment and peer assessment.I’ll be interested to follow this project. The magpie blog is a kind of metablog I think, following a dissertation, but also has personal stuff on it.

I heard on the radio this morning about this blog, which has apparently won an award and again, this looks interesting. While this one proclaims to be :

A weblog by Tom Coates who works at BBC Radio and Music Interactive
Concerning social software, mass amateurisation, design, and future media consumption

As far as I can see he is pointing people about the web, showing us stuff and offering comments etc. Interestingly, he explains:

If you’re unfamiliar with weblogs, then probably the best way to describe them is as a launchpad to express your opinions, engage in conversations and note stuff down in public. I’ve been writing this particular weblog since November 1999, when it was very informal and only for a few friends. Today all kinds of people seem to get value from it.

So he has clearly seen his own blog develop from a more private affair to one that is conscious of audience.

My daughter has kept a web diary for YEARSand YEARS. She first set up with diaryland and I think is still with them. But she HATES the way I keep a blogs and hates the way I write in them so often and that I tell people about it. Her view is that blogs should be personal, oprivate, reflective onlife, feelings, secret thoughts etc. She is quite disconcerted by my type of blog.

Now this conflicts totally with say, Torril Mortensen, who writes with Jill Walker saying that,

Blogs exist right on this border between what’s private and what’s
public, and often we see that they disappear deep into the private
sphere and reveal far too much information about the writer. When a
blog is good, it contains a tension between the two spheres, as delicate
a balancing act as the conversation of any experienced guest of
the French salons of the 19th century.

- which I have discussed here before.

It seems that some bloggers do feel there is a right and a wrong way to blog; I like having more than one blog, because I can put different types of stuff on each one and I enjoy what each genre offers. There are types of blog and if readers believe there is only one sort, then they can misunderstand the content, get upset or disturbed by what is there. You have to know how to read something, to understand the genre, to recognise the genre, in order to properly understand. Hence, some people have said to me, ‘I read your blog. What is it? I don’t understand it?’

So there is something to understand about blogs in general, but there are lots of sorts too.

And when I spelled Torill’s name wrong, and she was discombombulated about this, then it was because I think she was wanting me to follow the same rules as she follows within her family of blogs. Blogs which are academic, which are very reflective and which carefully subscribe to blogging rules evolved amongst her group over a long period. I think that genres in the blogosphere develop likea social history; shared conventions which develop over time through practice. it is impossible to link all blogs, to read all blogs, to have a coherency across them all, so communities, affinities emerge. Interesting.

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.

Many of the photographs on Flickr are images of the photographers themselves and of the photographers’ families and friends.
These are often accompanied by comments which give further details of family lives, friendships and collegial relationships.
The co-existance of the private/public space so often associated with online groups,is illustrated really clearly on the Flickr site and some of the shots I have seen are really intimate or of really important family moments - weddings, births even.
Meta photography is very popular and some people put deliberately provocative photos of themselves online. TT has a lovely post on this topic here.
It is as if in some spaces on theInternet there is a very strong sense of affinity, of trust and of defiance of all the stranger danger and discourses around the abuse of digital affordances by pornographers.
I had noticed when I was looking at Wiccan teens that in say 2002 - 2003 there were a great number of teens putting photos of themselves on thier webpages. Yet now this has massively decreased, presumably because of increased awareness of the danger discourses I referred to above.
I don’t know why, therefore there is this diffrence on the Flickr site. Maybe the ‘danger’ factor has fallen into obeyance since the stronger discourses are abbout the value of the photograph and the value of the affinity space itself. Maybe because of the ubiquity of digital cameras, digital photos etc that people feel less threatened by what can happen. The Flickr community maybe values the digital image so highly they cannot see the fear factor anymore?
People seem to want to offer a visual narrative of parts of theirlives, seeing themselves online, presenting a particular identity, and telling people in their comments, how to read the pictures.
Is there too much trust on this site?