ELL on the AOLing of
ELL on the AOLing of Blogspace…
Doc Searls waxes recursive at least three levels deep as he suffers serious blog-blogging ennui. Rather than take a look outward, Doc looks back to a chain of comments Joi Ito and Liz Lawley shared in October.
Here’s why I’m blogging it… earlier today I stumbled into Anne Galloway’s space, commented up a storm and blew on out of there. I didn’t feel exactly welcomed. Of course, Anne has serious work afoot, and deviating from the inward looking path set by her advisor and thesis committee could screw things up bigtime.
The direction of her work (”In particular, this paper addresses the role of comments and archives in delineating specific spaces and times of interaction while also creating what might be described as the never-ending weblog”) implies an acceptance of unbounded dialog. But she also wants to limit interaction to members of a particular community (”the author’s own weblog as a social and technological space between online academic and design communities”).
I’ve sometimes felt turned away by academic bloggers. But I’m drawn to these conversations by interests of my own, interests that may seem tangential at times, and often are less than professionally well informed. Yet over the years the feedback I’ve received for my participation in open communication with some heavy hitters has made me - perhaps immodestly - trust my intuition and the intellect, experience, and educational foundation that informs it.
So bite me.
The whole cult of academic postmodernity needs to loosen up and take a long humorous look at itself. The concern for exclusivity, the self protection found in both these blog spaces is a limiting factor for the proprietors’ own growth, stimulation, opening, call it what you will. And you don’t see the Goth bloggers harboring this kind of closed door protectionism, nor the Harry Potter bloggers, nor the gardening and recipe bloggers… blogging communities of interest are legion, and certainly have been and were since before the Lawley/Ito exchange. Elitism, the exclusionary tendency, the veritable tribal boundaries are formed consciously through the affective behavior of those for whom control and precise relationship definitions are an issue. No wonder the irreverent among us are likely to flip the impudent digit and again say, “Bite me.”