P, who had a look at this blog, asked if ‘that’ basically is what blogs are. Uhmmm, I think I said, yes. But every relationship, as it evolves acquires little, sometimes not so little, subtle dimensions, so that exchanges become overloaded so to speak. In other words, the dialogues that emanate from a relationship carry a kind of meta-dialogue, additional threads of information exchange and processes that happen in slightly different genres and timeframes of the relationship. This is not unique to social and business relationships. (Perhaps it is a difinitive property of relationships, but only in the strictest sense of the word I think.)
This is – ‘terloops’ – a playfield of consciousness, certainly an important aspect of cognition in any sense.
P’s question, in my mind asked me ‘why do you have a blog?’ more than it did what exactly, pragmatically or pedantically, a blog is or isn’t. At the moment – and the fact that it makes sense to type ‘at the moment’ right now is part of the answer – in essence for me the answer is – because blogSpace is a virtually infinite cognitive information-modelling environment.
It could also just be a fad of course, and like many designers I have a love-hate relationship with fads.
[The design process : gather (yin) and place(yang)]
In our, this emerging, world, what matters is not so much what knowledge you have, as what knowledge you can ‘get’. Not so much what knowledge you have, as what knowledge you put, and of course ‘how’ (qualitatively) in both cases.
Maybe I’m blogging because I believe database management (which lies at the core of blogs and the emergent boom of online-comunities) has important and exciting, potential and power. And this blog thing is an enjoyable way to develop my own skills in that direction – but I think it is more than just that. Perhaps I blog to narcissistically pamper my ego, which I suppose begs the question “is this blog about me?”.
Without getting tooo philosophical, yes, it is;
A. I know the passwords,
B. I pay its bills,
C. Even when it is about other things it will probably be my opinions or opinions I have solicited or accessed, so yes, its content and form are indeed orbiting all around me.
More importantly, the blog-space matrix is time-conscious. Documents are usually tagged with the time of their publishing, as are sometimes their edits. (Thus the ‘log’ part of Blog (weB-LOG).) Theoretically at least, it becomes easier to navigate the deeper structures of transmission, evolution and ‘involution’ of ideas, identities, issues or anything else that stirs just about anywhere in and around the pond of electronic mark-up-media. (Which, by the way, is being documented, recorded and analysed more extensively than you, and for that matter I, are aware of.) Increasingly time frame becomes an important parameter and consideration in any kind of design. Particularly currency, how current something is, often has direct relationships with how valuable it is. (The link between ‘prevalence’ and fiscal ‘tender’ in the word ‘currency’ seems poetically appropriate and perhaps even somehow existentially significant. :- )
Thinking back, a lot of the things I have heard, seen and read over the years, didn’t have the same significance they did back when I first heard them, as they do for me now. (I think this is some sort of inherent property of information and probably all data structures. (‘The fluid nature of Semiology?’)) Sometimes I wish I could trace-back to them, just to get them in their original form and context again, perhaps to explore and investigate their then significance or mesengers diferently etc… Presumable, the same could apply to my own and other’s ramblings – this is what the Blog offers.
Poetry is more than Code
I’m bloging to gather my thoughts, and to develop and express their product. To communicate. There is a beautiful logic to this place. A beautiful dynamism of ideas, identities, issues and always a hand full of entertaining village idiots, elders and their disciples. Every blog, no matter how isolated or self-absorbed (…ahem :- ), is a fireplace in the otherwise predominantly dark, alien and practically infinite realm of cyberspace.
I’m blogging because I love what cyberspace is.
Aside: Who are the exponents of Open-Source in South-Africa?
Of course all of this is pure speculation, something we have a history of here in Jo’burg. Information mining, which I believe is ‘the big thing’ shouldn’t be too much of a challenge; a good motivation for optimising our bandwidth accessibility across social and industrial spectrums.
Design is one of the elements that Industry has to breath, to survive and or prosper. Design and its flow of in and out, of research and formulation, of requirement gathering and specification formulation is also the heartbeat of industry. This simple flow is an ecology, an ecology of abstract and material resources, hamper the flow in either direction and the other direction’s flow tends to be directly, adversely affected. This is not rocket science, although even while not being any kind of rocket scientist myself, I suspect the same applies to rocket science, the more fuel you can somehow shove into the thing – without it going off in your face – the more mileage you can get from it.
Why do, or don’t you blog?
PS. As my international broadband is down; it may take a bit of time before I do all the linking I would like to do in this post, which, for pedanticists’ interest sake, obviously implies that I do edit blog enties after initial publication. I haven’t assessed the implications of this on ‘feeding’ but that is not an issue for me right now.