Andrew Sullivan’s “Why I Blog”

Ichimame, an 19-yea...

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Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic, a writer I admire, has written an ode to blogging that I like very much. Considering the fact that I’ve suffered from my first real bout of writer’s block over the past few days (thanks to a two-day trip to Rochester, NY, my work on a presentation about Web 2.0 technology, picking up a writing award in Manhattan, and a visit from my two college kids), reading Sullivan again has put me back on the right track.
Blogging is a solitary pursuit, and for me a pursuit that doesn’t pay the bills and attracts only a small (though loyal) audience. So occasionally, I run dry. But posting to my blog is constantly a thought that nags at me, reminds me that I’m still a writer. I might be getting older, I might be on a damned diet again, I might be finding excuses to avoid the gym, but my brain is still working. I want to learn, read and write.
Here’s what Sullivan says about blogging:

You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference: a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, of course, just as correspondence could be—but usually posthumously, or as a way to compile facts for a more considered autobiographical rendering. But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one. It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before.

And when I’m feeling that this is so solitary a pursuit, I’ll try to remember how Sullivan describes the immediacy and companionship provided to a blogger by his readers, commenters and dissenters.

On my blog, my readers and I experienced 9/11 together, in real time. I can look back and see not just how I responded to the event, but how I responded to it at 3:47 that afternoon. And at 9:46 that night. There is a vividness to this immediacy that cannot be rivaled by print. The same goes for the 2000 recount, the Iraq War, the revelations of Abu Ghraib, the death of John Paul II, or any of the other history-making events of the past decade. There is simply no way to write about them in real time without revealing a huge amount about yourself. And the intimate bond this creates with readers is unlike the bond that the The Times, say, develops with its readers through the same events. Alone in front of a computer, at any moment, are two people: a blogger and a reader. The proximity is palpable, the moment human—whatever authority a blogger has is derived not from the institution he works for but from the humanness he conveys. This is writing with emotion not just under but always breaking through the surface. It renders a writer and a reader not just connected but linked in a visceral, personal way. The only term that really describes this is friendship. And it is a relatively new thing to write for thousands and thousands of friends.

The next time I run dry, I’ll return here for water.

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Techno-Impersonal

BlackBerry user Dou...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

During the past week, I have suffered in a minor way from laptop withdrawal. My mother was visiting me from Florida (which explains my absence from this blog), and I was thoroughly part of the real world — Broadway shows, bus tours, dining out, shopping, conversing, catching up. Every now and then, it would occur to me that my laptop might miss me, but I was bonding with my 75-year-old Mom. And yet, when I sat down to check daily emails and write one freelance piece, she said stuff like: “Wow, does anyone talk anymore?” Or: “Are you always online?”

This week, National Public Radio’s Scott Cameron, Editor of “Talk of the Nation,” noted in the program’s blog that someone in his building “has been known to sit in one of the stalls in the men’s room and click-click-click on his Blackberry while – er – doing his business.”

Why did Cameron bring this up? Because according to a new Sheraton hotels survey of 6,500 traveling executives, 35 percent of them say they would choose their Blackberry (or similar PDA) over their spouses. Another 87 percent said they bring their devices into the bedroom, 84 percent check their emails before going to sleep and 80 percent check their emails as soon as they get up, “before their first cup of coffee.”

Weirder still — 85% peek at their e-mail in the middle of the night. I thought I was bad.

On the flip side, say the Sheraton folks, 84 percent of these professionals said the technology allows them to spend more time out of the office and enjoy more quality time and flexibility with their family and friends.

Mom — I don’t even own a Blackberry. Not yet.

But, as NPR’s Cameron points out, “this is so much bigger than the Blackberry…laptops, PSPs, cell phone, portable DVD players, iPods, all tend to make their way into the covers” (or under the sheets).

Just check out this New York Times story, “Laptop Slides Into Bed in Love Triangle,” as proof. And note that it was published in August 2006.

Send me your comments — do you spend more time with your technology than with your loved ones? Would love to hear your stories.



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Librarians are Cool

Libraries almost invariably contain long aisle...Image via Wikipedia

I know I’m dating myself here, but I don’t remember ever having a cool librarian as a kid. Instead, the librarians I knew had pursed lips, shushed people for a living, and slept with the Dewey Decimal System.

Not today. Librarians are Twittering, Facebooking, blogging, wiki-ing, and definitely not sleeping with the Dewey Decimal System.

If you want proof, take a look at the Library page of the Online Education Database, which currently contains reviews of 1,081 programs from 86 accredited online colleges. There, you’ll find tons of references written by and for librarians about using social media in libraries around the country.

Here’s what the Library page says about Twitter, for example:

Twitter is a free communication and social networking tool which allows you to convey short messages of up to 140 characters to your circle of friends via the Twitter website, SMS, email, IM, or other Twitter client. Messages appear not only within your profile on Twitter, but are sent to your community of followers who have signed up to receive your updates. Often referred to as microblogging, this new phenomenon has caught on with over 300,000 users on Twitter alone including Barack Obama and John Edwards. Twitter recently made the cut as one of Time’s Best 50 Websites of 2007. Librarians are using it to communicate at conferences and events and to keep up with developments in the field, and libraries have begun using it to promote their services.

Among their listings are librarian-only applications and networks like:

Shakespeare High Cafeteria: This online tribute to Shakespeare features active discussions about Shakespeare news, book clubs, a creative writing center, “staff lounge,” study help and teaching ideas.

Readers Read: Browse forum topics like publishing industry, general fiction, mystery/thriller, children’s books and nonfiction.

TeacherLibrarianNing: Educators and librarians get together on this network, where you can join groups, post photos, upload videos and more.

The Shifted Librarian: Librarians connect through this blog about library news, trends and of course, books.

Librarian Facebook Application: This Facebook app connects you to other librarians who can answer your search questions.

They also list a number of social media sites for librarians and book-lovers, including:

Shelfari: This blog about books and book collecting has a MySpace page and a Facebook application.

GoodReads: Keep track of what you and your friends are reading through this online networking site.

BookJetty: BookJetty lets users organize, rate and review books and even look up books in the site’s database of over 300 libraries around the world. Users also get a blog that lets them show off a “bookshelf” to friends.

MySpace Books: This ultimate social networking site has a page just for books, connecting readers, authors and those in the book industry.

Books iRead: Another Facebook app that lets you rate, review, and share books you’ve read.

You can also catch a number of 21st century posts on the site, including these:

50 Ways to Use the Wii In Your Library

100 Essential Firefox Add-Ons for Librarians

e-Learning Reloaded: Top 50 Web 2.0 Tools for Info Junkies, Researchers & Students

100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better

Need any more proof that librarians are cool? I don’t think so.  Now shush!


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Land of the Open and Free? We’ll See…

I have been a fan of the openness of Web 2.0 — we’re listening to music, watching movies and TV shows, replaying Michael Phelps Olympics videos over and over again. All for free and open to anyone willing to put in the time and energy to click a few times. Everything I’ve read tells me it’s the open source decade, when licenses and copyrights will be a thing of the past. But the former journalist in me is skeptical.

This week, I wrote for another site about the Web 2.0 phenomenon of free books and free magazines online. The old-timer in this area is Project Gutenberg, with its 25,000 free books in its online book catalog. Also out there is the catalog of 30,000 books at the Online Books Page maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, Google Books, and Bibliomania, which has thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays online, along with message boards about books and authors and lots of reference materials.

Keep in mind that all these forward-thinking sites are prohibited by copyright law from reproducing any books published after 1923, so they all contain classics. But there’s Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and a slew of other recognizable (albeit classic) authors whose works have outlived the copyright laws.

An even more controversial newcomer to the Web 2.0 world is Mygazines, a site that encourages its members to upload their copies of Life, Time, Playboy and many more magazines as PDFs, which are then converted into easily readable “flip book” versions of magazines that anyone can read for free online. This, of course, has sent the publishing world into a tailspin over copyright laws and I’ve read that attorneys are working overtime to shut the place down. But so far, it’s still out there, as you can see from my screenshot. I personally (former journalist that I am) love it.

For those of you who prefer to live within the confines of the law, Zinio offers a long-overdue service. By obviously partnering with the magazine industry, Zinio offers single-issue purchases of magazines online, providing you with immediate access to the issue you wanted to read and saving on paper by letting you read the entire thing online. Awesome. The corner newsstand on your laptop.

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