Russ Beattie has given up his mobile web blog in favor of resting. And that's cool. This has met with mixed reactions. Whether it be McManus' silly David Letterman face or Shelly Powers idea that blog should have a short shelf life.
Shelly says:
This is a sound idea: close down the weblog, and if you do decide to come back, start a new one at a different location. In fact, I'm not sure that most personal weblogs should remain for longer than a few years. We all change over time; some weblogs reflect change that flows along like a raft on a gentle river on a summer sunday afternoon–it's nice. Others, though–rapids ahead! Ohmigod, it's Niagra Falls! Whoa, someone go back and collect my teeth after that sudden switch.
Her point is that we evolve over time and that blog entries, being asynchronous, float outside of time. Your blog post today can become your milstone tomorrow.
Many writers have written something on Monday and changed their minds by Wednesday. This is part of the conversation. Conversation involves having a group of people discuss a bunch of stuff and, through discussion, arrive at some conclusions. This is an evolutionary process through which thoughts are refined.
The problem is, Google doesn't respect evolutionary thought. Google doesn't respect the conversation. In fact, Google is a massive out-of-context engine for the database.
In the future, people can google a search term, come across your post from 2002, read it and respond. They never see the "What was I thinking?" post from 2003 that by now is ancient history to you.
This is not unique to blogs, however. Anything we say that is captured for posterity is vulnerable to future misinterpretation or misuse.
Here is where we find a need for innovation. For a while now, we've been discussing how to track the conversation. By and large we were talking about how to search and track current evolution in a particular conversation. There is also a need to track the historical elements of a conversation. What are the milestones of a conversation? What are the turning points, the tipping points, the low points? Who flamed whom? Who was inspirational? When did a particular thought that was previously overlooked become the obvious central theme? When did derivative conversations spin off? What ideas that seeemed sound in the beginning
The problem with saying "Well, I'll think something different tomorrow and therefore what I said in the past is invalid," is that it makes the evolution of thought and the evolution of the conversation subordinate to the conclusion. It also assumes that someday we'll all have some conclusion that will be ultimately supremely correct and that will be the only decision we will ever need.
The Soma Decision, if you will. The last decision that makes us all docile and irrelevant.
I'm reasonably sure we don't want to get there, so any decision we make is just another on our journey through life. The steps and missteps on that journey are as important as whatever destination we may have temporarily reached.
So I think the goal is not to kill our blogs every few years, but to find ways to give continuity to our blog posts - get them beyond static thoughts in time.
Technorati Tags: soma, conversation, blogging, posterity
Technorati Tags: soma, conversation, blogging, posterity
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