I Get This Guy To Think For Me

[f4f3]

If anyone hasn't friended Bruce Sterling, go off and do it now.

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/brucesterling/

As well as being the second most well known survivor of Cyberpunk he writes great novels, and is his blog is full of "mordant wisecracks, travel snapshots, art weirdness, flarf poetics and Bollywood obsessions"

This paragraph in his journal today really made me think about what we're doing here in the Blogosphere, what the product of all our typing is, and if we should be proud of it.


"After spending some years here in blogdom, I'm increasingly sure now that blogs are not a literary means of expression. By their nature, blogs are platforms for tech development. That is their "intrinsic advantage." Even if some blogs emit books ("blooks"), blogs are not about books. Blogs are about long tails, invisible tails, architectures of participation, commons-based peer production and crowdsourcing. Blogs by their semantic nature are aggregative mini-Internets. Even if run by theorists, blogs don't produce "theories" but "theory objects." If you don't believe me quite yet, well, just wait and see. The elephant is marching out of the haze, and soon we will see it revealed in its full, stark, hairy, mammoth proportions"

Comments

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

You mean I am not creating a work of literature? Jeez!

I quite like crowdsourcing as a neologism, though I am not sure I agree that blogs are "platforms for tech development" - that implies some form of intention.

Still, I have stopped thinking of my personal implementation of LJ as a blog - it is much more like a diary, as the name "Live Journal" implies.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I agree - I'd never thought about the "platforms for tech development" thing, and I'm not sure I agree with it now, but, as I say, it did make me think about it.