I've been wonding what this is all about for a long time so I am glad that Craig is wondering, too. Aside from the question of unauthoritative semi-fact, there is much good in the entertainment value of blogs but one simply can and should only devote so much time to being entertained. There are other things to be about in life. But the most interesting comment of his for me is this:
I am also finding old favourite blogs of less interest to me. More often than not, having a high noise to signal ratio. Many, seem to be evolving to a BBS sort of community (which is a good thing), but if you are not interested in the same types of topics that that community discusses, then interest in being part of that community wanes. Thus, I seem to be leaving the using computers and the Internet as a recreation to using same as a tool.I think this is a very valid observation. One can only rant to oneself so long. And being cranky at the sites of others is only fun when there is mutual fun in the cranking. Things eventually have to settle down to a more honest personal diary-style of writing, writing for writing sake, topical writing, community discussion or even writing approaching what Eric Idle is quoted as saying about Monty Python: "it turns the focus back onto itself. That's the Python key: to mock the form in which it lives."
Conversely, there is little place for the type-A-list guru-iffic floggy fantasies as those that have taken that stance have just shown how the ego can get in the way of honest understanding. If I look now at what I thought two and half years ago about what would kill off the bloggy cacophony I would now go with RSS as being the fatal app at least in its present use of being author rather than content based. No one can reasonably be expected to pay attention to everything written by 100 or more individuals. It is too much. So then you read only those you knew or wrote well or were sharing and interest...and the A-heads. And then the futuristic A-heads proved their own dullness and showed their motives. Aggregation became the reductio ad absurdum. I thought this taggy stuff would be it but it only became another bulky impossible aggregation.
Once again, we need a topical tree to index this damn place to find the content, so you find what is actually interesting to you and not what is supposed to be (according to the blogsperts) interesting to all. Any chance of that happening?
Comments
Nils - March 19, 2006 1:58 PM
I guess you guys are all way smarter than me. I just read blogs by people who amuse me, who I think might have something worthwhile to say that might stimulate my brain, whether it be to deeper thought or laughter or outrage or any of a myriad emotions.
My blog list has grown mostly through word of mouth (pixel-of-text?) and while I have a few daily stops, most of them are as-and-when-needed. Sometimes I'll go to a favourite blog and there won't be anything there (I eschew RSS , simply because I love the anticipation and either delight or disappointment that comes from doing it manually). Sometimes what's there won't interest me - or starts off interesting but devolves (for me, although I concede it may EVOLVE for everyone else) into an arcane discussion or a bitchfest or hissyfight. In which case, I make use of the X top right. Like I say, I'm not all that smart, but I got that part of it sussed.
So I check out a blog, or two, or ten ... comment where it seems like I might have something worthwhile to say (and occasionally, even where I know I don't) ... and then I go back to work.
I guess I "use" blogs, although I don't think of it that way. I don't think I've changed how I "use" them, and I don't pretend to suggest to any one else how THEY should "use" them.
They're just blogs. I mean, really.
Alan - March 19, 2006 2:09 PM
But isn't that sort of the point - you've skipped 2001 to 2006.
Craig Willson - March 19, 2006 3:01 PM
My musings, although they did wander off, was more of an inward looking ponder of how I seem to be changing in my use of computers and the Internet. I am not jumping on the 'blogs are dead' band wagon. Nils' description of how he sees blogs, mirrors my own.
Like Nils, I look for resources that will "stimulate my brain, whether it be to deeper thought or laughter or outrage or any of a myriad emotions." As blogs become more focused on topics of that community interest, my list gets shorter and shorter.
I don't think that blogs have changed a lot - I think I have changed - am changing - and will continue to change.
My interests have changed (or become more focused) and with that happening, I find less interest in general chit chat or people trying to be clever. Bah, I am not saying that well - hard to describe.
Alan - March 19, 2006 4:28 PM
None of it matters now. UNC just lost to Geroge Mason and there is now no way I can reinterpret the rules of my pool to win. Every subjective loophole is gone...gone...