I gained a lot from focussing the blog, but…

All my life I have felt torn in different directions by the diversity of my interests. The crucial thing I got from reading  Stephen Downes’ “How to be Heard” was to look at this from above, seeing myself at the centre with lines radiating to all those things no matter what they are - and to turn the arrows inward. Instead of being pulled apart, I am what draws these diverse things together. There needs to be no justification for the diversity of my interests, no connection between them, other than that I exist and I relate to these things. Downes says

The point here is that it is better not to focus on some specific topic, the way a university course does, but rather, to aim at some sort of intersection that touches on all of your interests. Anybody can write about e-learning, but only you can write about themes found in e-learning, romance fiction and skydiving. What would that look like? I haven’t a clue - that’s why I would need to read your blog.

So keep reading. I haven’t a clue what’s coming next either.

Old blog, new tricks

I am de-focussing this blog, as of now. Initially, on the advice of someone I greatly respect, I went to a lot of trouble to focus on/around a topic. That person still has my great respect, but I’m abandoning that idea.

The simple reason is, it has been a conversation stopper.

From now on I will write about whatever occurs to me, whenever.

The collision of fronts

I have been thinking for a while now about a post on Design Research about the problems with Facebook’s attempt to monetize its social network assets (that’s us) by making us into unwitting viral marketers. The author, Sam Ladner, reminds us of Erving Goffman’s notion of “the front”:

Using the theatre as a metaphor Goffman argued that we actually “perform” multiple selves. Each place we go has a “front” that we learn to incorporate. A front has a wardrobe, a setting, a decor, make-up, a script and stage direction.

Ladner argues that

Facebook’s Beacon didn’t work because it forces people to use multiple fronts AT THE SAME TIME.

In my view, even without Beacon, Facebook has that propensity. And so does blogging, particularly this kind of blogging where some of us are attempting to integrate blogging about our research and blogging about whatever else we want to blog about, including ourselves. We can choose what we blog about, which is a lot better than having our online purchases broadcast to everyone on our social network (surely they thought how embarrassing that could be?). But if we are going to blog in our real names about real things then there will be a collision of fronts.

Sam Ladner has pinpointed for me the issue that I felt but wasn’t articulating so well, which has been holding me back from “research blogging”. Now all I have to do is work out how to use multiple fronts at the same time without worrying. No - I have to start enjoying it!

The end of the internet as we know it - again

It looks as though there is yet another way to end the internet as we know it. Italy is doing it this time, by drafting a law which will, if enacted, make it compulsory for every blogger to register, to pay tax (whether or not the blog is for money-making), to form a publishing company that will hire a registered qualified journalist to be the director of the blog…

Which would wipe out upwards of 99% of blogs - and that is probably the idea. For more, see Beppe Grillo’s Blog.

Some folks don’t seem to like the fact that citizens are currently able to publish what we like, and to sometimes contribute significantly to public affairs. Fixated on that, these legislators also forget that most blogs are innocuous expressions of people’s daily lives. I mean, what about knitting blogs? Will they have to do all that too? What a farce. The Italian legislators are starting to resemble Senator Ted Stevens I am afraid.

[I know knitting blogs were unfairly bagged out during the Aulstralian Blogging Conference, and I defended them. I promise I will post some of my knitting soon.]