Why I Blog - by Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic →
Click on the link above for a great essay by Andrew Sullivan on why we all blog and its relation to traditional writing and traditional knowledge formation.
Things I took away:
- Whereas traditional journalism seeks to create a definitive point of view on a subject, a blog, in and of itself, is the definitive point of view, although ever changing and much more open to adaptation and conversation.
- Andrew presents blogs as “the host of a dinner party” which I think can be extended to an online presence (not just blogging) in that we are not always in control, it’s a conversation not a monologue, and its iterative and ever evolving.
- I also very much relate with his points on blogging as an extreme sport and as something that requires a greater sense of risk taking and “letting go”, whereas traditional journalism can be agonized over for years before any substantial amount of people see it.
- Finally, the old model of success being defined by another’s failure seems to be falling apart in the face of hyperlinking. Again, the idea of facilitating people seems to be most important here.
Here’s my favorite line, “Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.”
