Blogging, a survival strategy for daily life in the Age of I. Here I sit reading another articles where people try to introduce Blogging to the rest of us. First they explain the name:
“What is a blog exactly? Blog is short for Web log - regularly updated online diaries/news forums that feature links to news items and stories from across the Internet's World Wide Web. “
but the name is just a bit of cool or HSP (hot sex power) that is indicative of how early adapters see themselves any early adopters after all aren’t we all “web surfers”
“Most blogs are helmed by a single individual called a blogger. The majority of these self-made Internet pundits are simply Web fans who wanted to bring their own views to the online table.[Pitching Blogs]” This is also indicative of how they see us crazy bloggers.
Bog is actually a retrograde word like Micro-wave oven or Steering Wheel or Mechanical Pencil. Retrogrades [less is more] are necessary when the current set of words does not adequately convey the affordances (i'm going to use this word so much that you puke but I don't care I'm blogging alone) that make the new thing different, useful, significant or cool. Still when talking about new things, things you have to live to experience the ah ha moment, the reason to buy, cool word that struggle to help there understand that which they have not experienced yet. Blogg Blogger blog, Just as the authors of articles like this are now all web surfers they will soon all be fellow blogers. Why, because we are all struggling to survive in the Age of I and the affordanced(2) in this tool kit reduce the cost of searching for information.
“Wow. I missed the one year anniversary of my Radio weblog. 1+ year and thousands of posts. Probably 200,000 news items have been aggregated for me automatically (if I had to browse to read the news Radio aggegated automatically for me, it would have cost me 277 hours or about 1.5 months of my working life). During all of that time, even while I was using the beta product, Radio has been as solid as a rock. More stable than every other program I run, particularly given that I run it 24x7.”
[John Robb].
Early adapters are weird. They put up with more than most of us are willing to in both the time and frustration of learning to incorporate new strategies for surviving daily life than the rest of us are willing to devote. I think at one time in our lives or maybe many we all had to be early adopters. Just the changes to the shape of the Playtex nipple each decade that we give to our kids make them early adopters. Or try these new big boy pants.
Ok this author gets this part correct:
Having only emerged on the scene a few years ago, a growing audience of Web-savvy newshounds has quickly taken to getting their news and views from blogs.[Pitching Blogs]”
The web emerged on the sceen a few years ago and we each grow savver by the hour online The web is so vast and new at the same time that the mental model of a person with 3000 hours is vastly different than someone with 5000 hours. How many total hours do you have on line. How many hours of dailey browsing before you discovered the joy of the news agrigator. This begs the question.
Under what conditions will consumers choose to participate in the value creation process in a growing network system?
When they get credit for their contribution.
When the cost is with in their budgets of time money and gods law complexity.
Under certain conditions it is beneficial for the welfare of the entire community to pool their resources and pay certain members not to participate.
This guy Delhart Benidict lays out a consumer choice equation for the consumer producer behavior on the internet and makes some interesting conclusions about the conditions when they will. The affordances(3) in web logs match his conditions as do many other successful community web interactions but radio has better fit than most. This is where he makes the point that blogging is like a game of chess in that we are simultaniously producing and consuming information for eachother. Under these conditions the one that gives the most wins the most. A gift economy.
Why should a few at the top benefit from the creative contributions of the many. We should get credit for our creative contributions to the networked community. Radio has a method of side payments that allows that to happen (linkwhoring) another retrograde
MSNBC is running a story about the blog-o-sphere. I get a mention, but no links to anyone. If you don't link, you're still ink!
[Adam Curry]
Ok so why is it enable that my father will have a blog my wife my child I’ll even have a blog for my manshack (aka woodshop) First, because the affordances in web logs reduce the cost of participation in the economy of I. Second, I get credit for my creative contribution and when information is freely available it becomes advantages to give it away more freely, Third blogging makes my small word smaller, when I get credit for my creative contributions to the blogging ecosysem by linking out to others they link back to me and My Kevin Bacon number reduces and on one fine day becomes less than 2 which is my horizon of observability in a information control (pdf) network system. That greatly increases my capacity to know what others are currently working on even if I have not had direct contact with them recently.
My point is that web logs or blogging is a new and very useful strategy for those who have information needs(pdf). We all have information needs. And with broadband we consume information like snack food. The Web Log approach is very useful in helping us hunt down our next meal. Why did the Eskimo Indian go after a large and dangerous whales when each could be safer going after smaller prey on their own? When doing this research they (I can't find the link to they today) found that the ROI meaning calories per person, for the individual was higher if the worked together to go after larger more dangerous food. In summary We hunt better as a Pack.
Look what changes we are having according to the conclusion of this one article. The article ends by saying that this new form of communication requires a new approach, which he proudly puts in bold.
A New Approach
Blogs are a new medium and, therefore, require a new approach. It is crucial not to spam bloggers and to be aware of their likes and dislikes before you drop them a line. Canned, conventional pitch letters can be seen as offensive. Their preferred means of communication is e-mail and their address is often prominently featured on the site. When communicating with blogs, make sure to be completely open and honest about why you are contacting them, disclosing your organizational affiliation. Keep it to the point and always make sure to include a link to a published story or item that they might consider featuring. Do not ask bloggers to link to your client's site or latest press release. Bloggers are sensitive about becoming mouthpieces for other organizations and companies, which is the reason they began blogging in the first place. Pitching Blogs Shh everybody might want one
He speaks of bloggers as if he has discovered a new alien species.
Three things stand out in his new approach.
1.They don’t like spam. (Raise hand if you like spam.)
2. When communicating with blogs, be completely open and honest.
3. Keep to the point (don’t waist their time).
Those are the three things my dady told me before I he sent me to school each day ok not the spam thing. I can’t believe that a PR Pro considers those three things a New Approach. Hmm . . . what does that say about the approach they use with non bloggers today if that’s how they are going to treat people who keep a web log maybe we should all get one.
Future topics in this collection: The affordances(?) of paper stacking behavior on the desktop, the structure of Unsolved Problems, the untold story of a messy desk as the portrait of a beautiful mind, and The time implications on the topology of the blogging ecosystem.[Linked] Various explorations in Information seeking behavior as navigation.
Political - Reparations
Heard an interesting commentary on NPR yesteday on the way home from work.
It was on Slavery Reparations: http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/segment_display.cfm?segID=148580
Of course past oppression is indefensible and past generations of Blacks certainly suffered, but the guy argues that Blacks are better off today due to their ancestor's "forced" migration to Ameraica, than they would be today living in the African countries.
[Alan Kleymeyer's Radio Weblog]
Blogging is a social phenomenon, and the Blog-osphere self-organizes into clusters of the like-minded. Within one of those clusters, the small-scale drama of a life, the incisiveness of one’s film criticism or the knowledge one imparts about esoteric telcom regulations can foment a weird kind of microcelebrity. “In the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people on the Web,” says David Weinberger, author of “Small Pieces Loosely Joined,” an incisive book about the Net.[Breaking Newfrom Newsweek]
1:39:13 PM 
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