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February 06, 2005
one limitation of print media
here's at least one way that blogging is just like other forms of conveying the written word... you still have to write it. with your hands.
i've written at least 6 clever, pithy blog entries today. entries for 711, entries for lj, entries for here. problem is, i've written them in my head. while i was virtuously vacuuming the house, washing dishes two three times today, scrubbing bathrooms, running & switching & folding 4 loads of laundry... and no matter the alarmists' predictions, the technology doesn't allow for automatic telepathic thought-transmission during other thought-inducing but hand-occupying activities.
(linked from 711 b/c my limited tech prowess doesn't include proper trackback-pinging ability.)
repercussions:
1) my rhythm's off. blogging is exactly not supposed to happen all in a chunk on sunday nights.
2) i've mostly lost track of those 6 (or more?) bright ideas, and whatever i come up with in their stead, even if it's brilliant, won't feel as brilliant as it would have if i'd done it in the moment.
3) "virtue" is negotiable. i feel good about what i've accomplished. i feel bad about what i haven't. this isn't a new conundrum, of course, but it is one i didn't expect to happen with "post to your blog" as the thing i feel guilty about not doing.
4) i had more things to put in my teaching journal instead of fewer this week, & so now i'm further behind than i'd have been had i been inspired to clean last week instead.
5) i find myself complaining in a post about what i haven't posted about. i hate when bloggers do this. i NEVER want to do this AGAIN.
6) when i catch myself reflectively complaining, in my head i sound a little bit like madeline. and i find that charming.
7) all day, while i was cleaning, blogging in my head, accomplishing some things, neglecting others, and watching inspiration run down my arms and into the sudsy sink un-recorded, i kept thinking: "derek does this & raises a teenager. ty o'donnell does it with two toddlers. aleshia & jonna do it--all of it--with three kids to come home to. every day. madeline goes home to four. and i'm proud when once in a too-many-week period i find time to vacuum?"
8) re: the mommy-blog defense... these maligned women are at least posting about children. real children. real diapers. real learning to share about besting real challenges. real communitiy-building. me? the inconvenient overlap of the assignment schedule & my threshold for cat-hair accumulation. hardly a cultural assertion of anything at all.
9) another thing i wonder: who are the real alarmists, the ones who think all of this technology is leading to direct brain-to-machine encoding, or the ones distressed that it's taking so long to come about?
10) in a way, there's probably a very cogent point in here about embodiment & technology. my cyborg tendancies aren't supported by my hardware.
Posted by ttobryan at February 6, 2005 07:35 PM
Comments
hey, what about moblogging, phone blogging, photoblogging? http://joi.ito.com for example.
Posted by: sarah at February 6, 2005 09:41 PM
i should have known that. i have lj friends who phonepost, & i can't cry "phones require hands" either, because i walk past people talking to (themselves) headsets all the time. (on AIM below:)
***
sarah: blogging from mobilephones == moblogging. like joi.ito.com
me: so it's still phoneblogging.
sarah: there's a guy my oncle knows who does cyborg blogging
me: how cyblorg?
sarah: http://wearcam.org/glogs.htm
***
that is so exactly where i wasn't going.
Posted by: tyra at February 6, 2005 09:49 PM
Pod-casting tosses in a wrench, too. Is it writing? Is it composing? Is it posting?
Posted by: Derek at February 7, 2005 08:27 AM
i just posted on andrew's site asking what a "podcast" was, anyway. is that the same thing as what sarah's talking about above? or something different?
Posted by: tyra at February 7, 2005 09:13 AM
I am constantly having brilliant and insightful journal entries composing themselves in my head when I am somewhere other than where the journaling equipment, be in low-tech or hi, is. I never recover the brilliance of the original assemblage. Which is depressing. Because the brain is supposed to be able to recvoer those things. Or I am supposed to be able to hold thoughts for longer than it takes to move from the kitchen sink, or the side of my car in the parking lot, to the desk or computer or just a place to sit down with paper. I find the problem has only been magnified by the blogging world.
I wonder if carrying the micro-cassette recorder isn't a good idea after all. As many people as now walk around with cell phone ear pieces and look like they are talking out loud to themselves in public places, I could probably get away with this now. :)
Posted by: Chris Geyer at February 9, 2005 07:23 AM