part I: blogging is for me
Posted on | September 30, 2009 | 1 Comment
Today, kids, we’re reading Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters,” by Scott Rosenberg. Most of the book is about the first two parts of that subtitle, but the really interesting stuff is in that third part, about why blogging matters for us as individuals, organizations, institutions, companies, and societies as we move into a new digital age.
The first part is why blogging matters for us as individuals. Rosenberg argues that the web, and specifically blogging, is a tool for personal satisfaction on the individual level. My previous blog about my experience studying abroad in Bolivia was definitely an instance of personal satisfaction from blogging, but it’s not just the satisfaction of putting thoughts to keyboard: it’s connecting with people.
My point here is to debunk the idea that communication online is not legitimate, “real” communication. Rosenberg’s thesis in the early part of the book is that the point of the web, and particularly the culture of the web that later developed into blogging, is about “opening a channel between yourself and the world,” as he quotes Jesse James Garrett as saying. Basically, blogging matters because it gives us another way to communicate with the other people on the web, who are, after all, real human beings too.
Lots of people like to talk about how the web shuts down “real” communication by pushing all human interaction online, but there’s nothing fake about finding someone who shares a passion or a problem and starting a conversation with them. As creators of niche blogs have often found, you can sometimes find a more genuine, passionate, informed, and supportive community on the web than you might be able to find in “real life” because of its constraints of time and space.
So the reason blogs offer an opportunity for personal satisfaction is that they enable communities and conversations. I am particularly interested right now in the role of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations in these communities and conversations, and the role of the conversations in achieving the ongoing goals of the organizations. Part II is more on that.
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October 7th, 2009 @ 10:44 pm
Is it odd that, although it should be obvious that blogs are meant to communicate with other humans, your comment about the fundamental utility of blogging has struck me as powerful? Particularly I find valid your insinuation of a difference between blogs that seem to be throwing ideas out into an ether and blogs that truly attempt to communicate with (and persuade?) and audience. I have certainly read my share of the former and am looking forward to your blog as a functional member of the latter.