o brave new world: Blogging

Original derivations

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:48:19 GMT

Blogs are often completely derivative. One person somewhere writes something original, whether in the form of a blog post or an article or editorial that appears on some news site, and then bloggers pick up on it, whether directly or from other bloggers they happen to follow who find it first. Either the derivation will be a simple sentence pointing readers to the original with maybe the addition of a quotation or abstract (the kind of thing Ben Smith seems to like to do almost exclusively), or it will be a "riff" on the original, adding additional color or perspective, or simply providing a contrary opinion.

I myself tend to prefer a synthetic approach, pulling together different things I've read on a topic into a theme, drawing connections or contrasts where I see them, then providing a personal spin on it. No big surprise or mystery there, I suppose; originality isn't really my goal with this medium, but if I can add something to the discussion and offer at least an original synthesis, I feel like I'm being creative and perhaps even useful (though, to be sure, I have no illusions about the breadth of my readership or the influence I might have on those who do stop by from time to time, whose interest in my occasional blog expositions never ceases to amaze me).

Take this, for example: Al Giordano's recent post on McCain's trip to Columbia. What Al does with this piece is a bit of semi-original opinioneering based on a relatively idiosyncratic review of source material, synthesizing an interesting and compelling perspective on the news, one that you don't get just anywhere, least of all in the MSM. I count no fewer than 17 "link citations" in this particular piece, to sources including the IHT, the Huffington Post, MSNBC's First Read, the AP, and Wikipedia, as well as the author's own writings and related posts. This is one thing that makes Giordano so interesting: his eclectic interests and research which he builds on in the creation of original syntheses of material. Whatever you may think of his perspective, you could hardly say he's a lazy blogger, just regurgitating stuff that others have published: he thinks, takes his time, applies an original point of view, and produces something that a lot of people apparently find compelling, judging by his traffic numbers and authority ranking, to say nothing of his active, prolifically commenting readership (just check one of his posts: he gets not dozens of comments, but often even hundreds of them).

Although this isn't quite what I had initially envisaged doing with Al's piece on McCain in Columbia, it does demonstrate the point well enough. It's interesting what you can do with blogging when you put your mind to it.

- dave//

del.icio.us Tags: blogging,Giordano,politics

all that you can't leave behind

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:33:53 GMT

Transitions, transitions. Seems that there's very little in this digital, online world of ours that is constant and stable; the only constant seems to be change. What respite we have in a period of relative stability is really just that: a moment of rest along the way to someplace, something else.

In the last 6 months my job has changed and so has my personal life. (In fact, as I write this, my girlfriend is moving out with the help of her parents.) It may have something to do with turning 40, but somehow I doubt it. In any event, one I suppose unfortunate result of all this upheaval is that my blog has languished. I have no idea how many readers I have nor how many (if any) would really care. But at least, I feel that in having started something like this blog and having seen it through some of its own transitions to the point that I began to feel comfortable with the whole notion of public journaling and even began to derive some satisfaction from the activity, I would be sorely remiss were I to let it go forever.

This blog was really only incidentally about the things I've been working on at that place we call "work." The real point of the blog, as it evolved over the past year or so, only became clear to me I'd say in the last few months: the point isn't the technology or social networking or this project or that project. It's about my--and by extension, perhaps, our--human experience with those things or in the context of those things. I think that's why I came to rename my space "o brave new world" and its blog "the bnw blog." I was very purposefully thinking of Aldous Huxley's novel of the same name, a book I had read eons ago in the pubescent murk of high school. I was also thinking, a little more distantly, of the lines from Shakespeare's Tempest that inspired Huxley's choice of title:

O brave new world
That has such people in't!

I think one thing that resonates for me about this is that the marvel of the "new world" is tempered in particular by an ironic regard for the people who have made it and live in it, proponents and malcontents alike. I just find the irony in the sentiment altogether too fitting... My own experience of modernity, whether defined in the work world or my personal life or whatever is left in the space between the two, has been quite a journey of abrupt departures, strange turns, and a gradual, sneaking suspicion that destinations are just waystations, "end goals" (other than the one that awaits us all) are just illusions.

And I'm gradually becoming ok with that. What really is left for me to do but try to find meaning in all the absurdity and maybe connect with some of my fellow travelers along the way and laugh about it over a beer or martini?

I've had to rethink what I'm doing with this blog and what kind of energy I want to put in it. It's clearly not something I feel I can (or should) leave behind, in the dustbin of ones and zeros that is all too often what happens with our words and deeds online. While this blog will be much more of a personal blog from here on out, my theme remains mostly the same: my experience of technology, living in this world today, and wondering from time to time about where it's all headed and what my place should be in it. From time to time, I may talk about things outside or beyond those core concerns, but I think by the very nature of this medium, anything I'd have to say wouldn't be very removed from them.

(For more professional stuff, you can now find me blogging and publishing and building customer connection programs for the System Center marketing team. It may not at first blush seem like it, but it's all related in the end.)

- dave

Windows Live Writer Beta

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 17:42:28 GMT

Of course the news is all over the place about the first "killer app" for Windows Live: Windows Live Writer. I'm just beginning to experiment with it, but it definitely looks promising as a blog-writing solution for the rest of us...

More later.