To Blog or Not to Blog?

Matthew G. KirschenbaumAssistant Professor of English

MITH Digital DialoguesMay 6, 2003

Hello World

A foot of snow and counting here in DC. Wind picking up, not much visibility looking out over Rock Creek Park. Spent a few hours this afternoon getting this blog up and running.

Posted by mgk at February 16, 2003 03:37 PM

Strictly speaking . . .

. . . a “blog” is a Web log: a regularly updated online journal consisting of (relatively) short posts or entries by the blog’s owner/author.

But blogs also . . .

. . . represent the next stage in the evolution of the personal homepage (Justin’s Links).

Ultimately, blogs are . . .

. . . self-organizing discourse networks that are reclaiming the Web from exclusively corporate interests via advanced indexing, syndication, and linking technologies.

Blag

My colleague Bill Sherman informs me that blog is suspiciously close to "blag," British slang for "talking at length and with authority about something you don't know anything about." Hmm.

Posted by mgk at February 21, 2003 05:58 PM

Blogging Tools

Slash (Slashdot) GreyMatter Blogger LiveJournal Manila (Radio UserLand) Tinderbox (Eastgate) Movable Type

Movable Type

Free (donation suggested) Customizable stylesheets (CSS) Local installation

An account on a webserver that allows you to run custom CGI scripts.

Perl, version 5.004_04 or greater, installed on this webserver.

Support for the DB_File Perl module OR MySQL & DBD::mysql

Trackback Really an entire Web publishing system

Vox

Blogging requires a new voice, and new rhythms, routines, cycles. I guess I'll work on it.

Posted by mgk at February 16, 2003 08:41PM

The Blogosphere

BlogRolling Blogdex Blog Ecologies Blogshares AllConsuming

New Standards

Trackback RSS (an example) Creative Commons

Will Blogs Kill Listserv?

Earlier I had said, none too originally, that the blog seems to represent the next stage of evolution for the personal homepage. I still think that's true, but my recent immersion in blogging has also brought home to me the importance of feedback, interaction, multi-directionality. You post and then wait for comments and trackbacks. You log on in the morning and look at your blogroll to see who's updated. It seems to me that blogs are filling the vacuum created by the demise of many listserv discussion groups, at least in those corners of the academic world I inhabit. Conversations that would have once taken place on list have moved to the blogosphere, which functions as a richer, more granular, and--this is what's most important--self-organizing discourse network.

Posted by mgk at March 3, 2003 11:46 PM

Warblogging (the real embedding)

Warblogs:cc The Agonist Instapundit Cursor Salam Pax

Social Software

“Many-to-Many” Wikis MMRPGs

Why I Blog

To have a voice in my research community

To organize links and ideas To communicate with students To write more often than I might To try out new technologies