After an episode like this I usually manage to calm down again in a routine probably instilled in me way back in childhood. OK calm down there’s probably a perfectly good reason. Try another machine. ….same again. All right then look around Flickr and check the blog registration. No fine. That’s fine, so what’s really going on? Eventually I thought I’d check the boards (I don’t really like them which is why that was the last port of call) and lo and behold there’s a long long trail of similar complaints, reassurances from the Flickr people, advice from other bloggers and so on. I just put ‘Get it sorted’ and left.

Co-incidentally - I think - I went on and posted this on digital provenance using the Blogger picture function. The irony being that part of the digital crossing that I was tracing involved a direct reference to Flickr!
In the cold light of day, and in the reflexive spirit that is the Blogtrax project, I’ve been pondering on why the Flickr glitch was so emotional for me. Do I become socially or digitally dysfunctional when apps go out of wack? What would happen if blogger went down with the credit crunch/downturn/financial tsunami whatever? How many expressive tools need to shut down before one has to seriously reconsider one’s habitual identity performance?

Anyway it was so reassuring when coming around to posting these troubling thoughts to find a comment here. Sometimes Blogtrax feels like a lonely outpost on the digital frontier. Blogging has become so normal that its getting harder to ‘make the familar strange.’ Harder, but of course no less worthwhile because of that.

Well there are several good reasons, or so it seems to me. The first is entirely personal and perhaps may seem strange to some. I just like the look and feel of Blogtrax. It somehow invites longer posts than my personal blog, it feels more private (ie less visited) and it just looks great on the screen. Secondly, I like the idea of the autoethnographic postscript. The piece is finished, published and probably largely unnoticed but it still stands as a record of the sense that two academics made of the world of blogging and the kinds of meanings they read into their own blogging practices - and, yes, let’s pluralise that. In that sense it’s a frozen record, but I’m rather attracted to the idea that Blogtrax itself could map the contours of ongoing practice. Dr Joolz and I have now co-written two book chapters on blogging and a further chapter in our forthcoming book. That’s a lot of words about a practice which I still believe is developing. Thirdly, there is something about the accretion of meanings, the building of knowledges and the forging of new understanding and this builds on the previous idea of forward momentum that makes the whole more than the sum of its parts.

So, is there a sense in which a blog can really lead to development and to the creation of something new? Can we write ourselves into a new frame of mind? For some reason, that I haven’t quite yet fathomed, I get the sense that this is a distinct possibility. I wonder if I have developed my ideas through successive outpourings, whether I have become more skilled at appropriating the voice of others, whether I have written a new script for myself. Under what conditions do the stories we tell about ourselves become emancipatory, I wonder? This is not to suggest that I am subscribing to the romantic view that imbues writing with magical properties, but merely to inquire into whether a process of regular reflection - regular and relatively short-burst reflection has its own strengths.

The difficulty is one of how to unscramble such a chaos of conditions. The regular conversations, the reading, the other writing all appear to contribute to a sort of onward march of ideas. Certainly that’s the way it feels. And four years ago, when we started up this blog I don’t think I would have thought about it those terms at all. But that was then, and as I scroll down the tags, to find something appropriate for this, they all seem like postcards from another place. Oh, I suppose I’ll go for Blogging, Learning and Identity - they seem more or less OK.

Not that we would want to confer blogs with some sort of universal power to create reflexive awareness of identity any more than we would subscribe to those ideologies about the power of literacy to transform cognitive processes. But still it strikes me that once we begin to make conscious decisions about representing ourselves, and once we begin to reflect on that process - particularly in dialogue with others - in terms of what is allowed, what is included and what is bracketed, we can develop clearer insights into the whole process of identity performance. And because blogs tend to the personal (my online home; the cubby hole; wunderkammer or whatever), identity performance through topic choice, hyperlinking and blogroll allegiances becomes more salient and more open to scrutiny.

However, when blogger friends slow up in their posting and presumably in their enthusiasm, I suppose you do stop and think. But then I’m aware of how they only represent a small segment of the writing/reading blog culture, and so the blogging goes on. Interestingly, I was at a meeting of academics last month, when someone suggested that a new initiative required a blog. The ‘groan’ reaction was interesting - but I wasn’t quite clear whether it was a groan of reluctance (we’ve been here before), a groan of overload (not more reading/writing), or a groan that suggested that somehow the blogging format was now passe.

In an interesting contrast to this, as I begin to introduce blogging to students, there is more interest. It’s as if something exotic has now been tamed. And of course it has been in VLEs. Here blogging is behind bars. But I’m quite positive about that, because I’ve noticed that as students and teachers become more habituated to the blog (and wiki) tools - we use them in the Blackboard environment - they begin to understand the purposes and principles a bit better. And, at the same time, they begin to understand the limitations in terms of audience and functionality. I’m still quite content to blog away! Sometimes I have more to say than others; sometimes my postings are lightweight, sometimes they atempt to record ideas or trends that are significant (at least to me). A lot of the time, now it feels more like building up an archive and Blogger’s introduction of tags certainly helps to create this sort of mindset.

I still feel proud of my blog and rarely look back at postings and think ‘I wish I hadn’t said that’ - I don’t tend to edit posts after publishing except to mend a broken link or when there’ s a mistake that makes things unclear. The most personal side of my blog is my use of images. I’m not a photographer, but I like to have a visual element. What I really enjoy is the juxtaposition. Sometimes my Flickr image will have absolutely nothing to do with the written text, other times it will have a meaning to me (and maybe one or two others) - and at other times it will pun or simply illustrate the post.

‘We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die.’ Hustvedt, 2003: 120

What a fib!!

Guy suggested that it was probably a hacker and he was right … so I wonder why people do that kind of thing? I t must take ages to work out how to get a programme to tell email adresses from blogs; then the p person has to think ofg the great idea to put in the email … e.g. ‘your passwrod has now changed’.. and then execvute the idea.

Why?? I don’t get it.

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.

Although posting is sometimes a bit of a chore, it’s become a real habit for me and there’s no shortage of stuff to put up there. So I can’t really see slowing-up myself at this point in time. Recently, my posting has been much more focused on digital literacy and from time to time I’ve found myself commenting on education which is a bit of a new departure for me.

I have my blog set as my home page, and therefore tend to look at it regularly. I use the sidebar links a lot, particularly while I’m working. So it’s identity performance, regular updating and a handy bookmark all at the same time. I do most of my blog reading at home. My patterns vary a bit, but I check my favourite blogs every couple of days, others every week or so. At the moment I’m not using any feeds, because Snap gives me a quick page view which does just as well.

Usually when I’m writing (and reading more) there are more links to papers and stuff. Other times the posts are like observations, proto-thoughts or field notes. Currently blogging is quite a quick process - maybe 10 mins or so, but every so often I have the need (or interest) to build up my photo-stock on Flickr….so that can add to the length of time involved.

I don’t spend a lot of time tinkering with the look of my blog, although I do wish it looked a bit less busy (like the Critical Literacies one). The last thing I did was add Snap - then before that I just wasted about half an hour one night working out how to put a space in between my photo and the blog title (how sad is that?). The other thing I do on a regular basis, as it happens, is update my reading/listening bit through 43 things. That’s very personal - I love doing that - but I don’t thing anyone else cares at all. No-one’s ever commented on that on the blog or face2face!!

My personal blog is now 3 years old - that seems significant in itself - and I’ve been wanting to reflect on that for a week or so. In 3 years I have just over 500 posts - that works out at roughly one every other day on average, but given that I was away 3 months and often stop when I’m abroad, my ‘normal’ frequency is higher than that. OK so that’s a bit boring, but one thing that it shows is that its a pretty regular part of what I do - part of my life. Mostly, I just like doing it and enjoy the exercise of thinking about something that’s interesting and then writing it up. I like watching it grow as an unbounded, cumulative text.

It’s hard to tell how my posts change over time, but it seems they’re nearly all to do with technology, writing and teaching and how these things intersect with my personal and professional life. I think I tend to add in local colour about what I’m up to, what my family’s doing and then add the occasional comment about current affairs - but these provide background detail. I use my sidebar to show reading and music, but my comments on these are minimal. My sidebar is a mess, but it’s one of the most useful bits for me. Since my blog is set as my homepage, it’s got some of the most important links for me.

I’m interested in how I use my blog for different purposes. A common one is when people email about research stuff (eg I read so and so, is there any more?). It’s dead easy just to say, check the links on my blog…but also when friends or students hear about Ruth’s singing - I can’t remember any details, but I can say ‘Look for Ruth on the sidebar.’ I’m sure there’s much more like this but these examples really blow a whole in that idea that a blog is an online journal. I mean who’s journal has that kind of functionality?

Most of the time I love my blog. I like its distinctive, quirky look and I like it when people unexpectedly stumble on it. It’s good the way people pick up on different things ‘Oh I saw my picture!’ or ‘I liked the bit you wrote about’, ‘I don’t get it’ or ‘I liked that picture of the steam engine.’ - whatever. Sometimes I’ve got too much to say and these days I just try to keep it to a paragraph; sometimes what I’ve got is a collection of completely unrelated things; sometimes I can’t think of anything to write. Sometimes I hate my blog. I hate it most when I don’t feel I have anything to say, when I’m tired but still in the trall of that blog addiction.

But when I look back at my posts (with the possible exception of the very early ones which I thought were secret) I feel good about them. If there’s humour I don’t really care if no-one else laughs. If there’s insight, I don’t care if there are no comments. Sometimes I get the feeling that some readers might find what I’ve written pretentious but I don’t care because that’s what was on my mind. I often read the whole screen of my blog, and I nearly always think ‘Yes….good’. I hardly ever regret posting something.

Last, and really a rather funny thing that’s worthy of comment is my fear of transferring to the new blogger format. Funny because I’ve been raving for ages about getting category tags on Blogger…and now they’re here…BUT that means transferring my blog with the possibility that some of the add-ons and its particular look may shift. Will I be old-skool for ever? Probably not, but I’ve recognised that I may need time when I make that leap and so far I haven’t had it!

(Not really a postscript but another bit after ‘last’). In my teaching I’ve been looking at the blog as a reflective tool…now I’m beginning to see that everywhere. Of course you couldn’t say that it’s part of the blog architecture, blogging is no more or less reflective than any other kind of writing but composing your thoughts for your ideal reader is certainly a common blog genre - long may it thrive!

lizjones112 Pro User says:
Nice shot, I’m glad I’m not the only one who takes pictures of padlocks!

on-the-run Pro User says:
Actually it’s contagious. I thought your’s were so good that I suddenly found myself copying!!

lizjones112 Pro User says:
Thank you, glad to know I can inspire others to take interesting pictures

I wrote about this on my own blog, referring to visual memes, but all the time I was thinking about copying and the whole ambiguity of that culturally located concept of copying. I guess we are first socialised into the complexities and nuances of copying in school. We learn for example that:

- close imitation is good in certain contexts (such as letter formation, lining up, singing, turning somersaults, using technical vocabulary)

- imitation is bad, when we make fun of how people walk, speak and so on…that is as long as they are not legitimate targets (and of course what constitutes a legitimate target varies from situation to situation)

- imitation is good in creative tasks, particularly in the broad sweep of things such as kinds of representation, writing genres and so on

- imitation is bad in creative tasks when it shows a lack of originality and when it is a straightforward (literal) copy

In a nutshell, we learn by copying and we learn not to copy. Our academic life is shot through with similar notions about copying. Plagiarism is bad, summarising someone else’s ideas and acknowledging them is good. Doing a similar thing to someone else locates you in a particular discipline or field. Doing exactly the same thing is unoriginal etc etc. Underlying all this there seem to be some cultural constructs about individuality, originality, authority and authorship that are related to the way that knowledge and learning are conceived of and policed in the dominant Western paradigm. These are all concepts that new media and new technologies challenge. Yet, we still prize the originality of our blogs even if we riff off the posts of others; we celebrate the uniqueness of the images in our photostream even when we are inspired by others. Cut/paste, capture/remix, and rip/burn technologies suggest how we can make new knowledge or art out of the work of others. Originality and creativity is perhaps re-defined in terms of the juxtapositions we make, the new links we establish. What we do then is less like orchestrating new comments more like deejaying, seguing one idea track into another whilst still keeping our audience on the dance floor. Maybe copies our OK (after all they serve DJs well), we are distinctive in the versions we have and the combinations and sequences we make and, of course, the spaces in which we produce them. After all that’s where we perform our identity and develop our reputation.