Riba Rambles: MORE Musings of a Mental Magpie

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been exploring why I blog, how I blog (or what I blog about), and what I'm trying to get out of blogging. I've been writing this on-and-off for the last two days. The ending still feels a bit rough and rushed; I probably could've spent more time polishing this, but I wanted to get it posted before I left for Florida. At any rate, this is what I've come up with so far.

An interesting aside: When I started keeping this journal last year, I referred to it as a journal. Now I generally call it a blog. Partly it's because blog is shorter to speak and write. But I also perceive a stylistic difference between the two. I view journals as akin to diaries -- primarily personal -- whereas blogs are more for external matters such as current events.

A fundamental element of my personality is that I like to share information with others. There are a couple parts to that:

I get excited by information and learning. However, discovery for self-edification isn't half as much fun for me as having other people to talk to about those ideas. When I inform somebody else, I often end up learning a little more -- about the other person or about the topic. The basic act of organizing my thoughts enough to explain them often helps clarify them in my own mind. [Aside 1 ] In addition, I gain more understanding by communicating interactively with others: through their reactions, the questions they ask, or (best and most stimulating) by engaging in a broader discussion with other people. In these conversations, I learn both from what the other party says, and by researching more information to back up my point of view to rebut their points.

Part of the reason I first created this journal was because leaving Lotus meant losing access to the discussion databases where I engaged in most of my political debates. I still miss them. I love Usenet, but often preferred the quality of discourse in the internal dBs. [Aside 2 ] And I wish I could inspire more such back-and-forth interaction from my entries here. [Aside 3 ]

But it's not just the exchange of ideas; I also really like helping people. It makes me feel good when I can do something to better somebody else's life. One of the things I do well (better than most) is finding information.

Because of my interests and infovorous habits, I encounter a lot of information. Some of it is interesting or important, but given Sturgeon's Law, a lot of it is just noise. When I see something I think may help a particular person, it only seems logical that I send it their way, rather than doing nothing and hoping they encounter it serendipitiously. [Aside 4 ]

Now, I enjoy finding information, both through casual contact or by targeted searching. [Aside 5 ] But I understand that not everybody does. As long as I'm reading these things anyway, it doesn't take that much more work to set aside items to share. I separate the wheat from the chaff and spare others some of the chore of independently finding what I've already got.

The jargon term for this is filtering and I do view this blog partly as a filter, sifting out the nuggets that I think my friends would benefit by reading. [And someday, maybe I'll actually finish reading Interface Culture, in which I first encountered the explicit definition of the concept.]

And, for purely personal motives, to remind me of things I've thought or done. Atomz emails me regular search reports and I often get the impression that I'm the only person who uses the search facility. But I do use it a lot. My memory isn't the greatest, so blogging things means that I just have to search my blog for a something in the past rather than trying to find it across the Internet. And, I'm lazy. Once I've written something out, the next time I wish to express that concept (or something similar), I can start with what I've already written, and build upon that, rather than starting the sentiment over from scratch. Very useful.

a. original research,
c. news not found anywhere else,
d. aggregators that capture the best of many blogs/feeds, so they need not be read individually
e. clever, concise political opinion,
h. insight: leading-edge thinking,
i. short educational pieces, and the occasional
k. fun stuff

Now I don't know how well I'm doing at these, and am probably not the best person to evaluate myself. But here are a few thoughts:

I probably could work harder on being concise (e), but brevity has a high price in terms of the time it takes me to write. I already feel like I take more time to research and write posts than they're probably worth. While it might make logical sense from a cost/benefit standpoint to treat blog entries as disposables and not put so much effort into them, I just can't not do my best. I'm not comfortable making unsupported assertions; I need to know my arguments are backed up by the facts, and research is easy enough for me that it's difficult for me not to.

Another method of being concise would be to focus my writing on some particular facet, becoming a "category killer" (d). But that's just not me. There's too much going on in the world for me to limit myself to any one discipline. I really am a mental magpie, attracted to shiny intellectual pursuits, from 400-year-old British history to social effects of future technology and everything in between. And, as Shakespeare wrote for Rosalind in As you like it, "Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak!" This journal is a reflection of me, and I can no more narrow my writing topics than I could narrow my interests.

Keeping separate journals for specific topics won't work for two main reasons. (1) I tend to flit from interest to interest like a butterfly so these interests wax and wane. I actually have several defunct journals which started with promise and then petered out. (2) For me, all knowledge flows together. The gin craze of the 1740s sheds light on current drug policy. When reading about Charles II last week (which I hope to blog about one evening when I can quote from the book), I saw resonances to Bush's State of the Union address in what historians call the Third Anglo-Dutch War. [See? There I go again, spending time to research what should otherwise be a purely tangential point. The book I read didn't use that term to refer to the conflict, but as I start to explain it to others, I try to find sources of information that reinforce my point or can explain the topic simply to others.]

In earlier drafts, I credited myself with (c), but not (d). Talking it over with Ian, he disagreed with this assessment, and we discussed it further.

Initially, I lighted on the "category killer" aspect of (d), thinking of such narrowly-focused blogs as Librarian.net or How Appealing. And (as I said above) I can't restrict myself in that manner. However, Ian saw (c) as referring to actual reporting or first-person news, such as Salam Pax, and said the filtering I'm doing is akin to the aggregation described in (d).

I rebutted that while I may be starting with publically available data on the Internet, the ways I combine them make it into (c). For people who get much of their news from the blogosphere, most of the news I post may can be found elsewhere. On the other hand, I know that for certain readers and certain stories, I have been their only source for information.

Also, while anyone could parse of the White House press briefing as I had, few others did. [Ian agreed that that post qualified as original news, and went further, pointing out that in this case I was doing for free what journalists should be getting paid for, and where were the journalists on this story? But I digress.]

At any rate, whether it's categorized as (c) or (d), I do appear to be providing a useful service and wouldn't want to stop something that's working so well.

As far as originality (a) is concerned, I want to do more than just provide a list of links to other blogs. I'm trying to add commentary and value, to highlight the heart of the issue (further filtering). But again, that takes time. I mean, easiest for me would be to just post links as I find them, similar to the way I intermittently IM links to my husband. But where's the fun in that? Without context, why would readers have any reason to follow these links? Ian may trust me enough to open any link I send him, but I wouldn't expect that level of blind faith from the rest of the world. And so I synthesize, summarize, synopsize. Sometimes I quote, but trying to keep it within legal fair use guidelines. And, I try to go beyond repetition of the linked article to add value, explaining what I found worthwhile or why it's important.

Insight and leading-edge thinking (h) are much more time-consuming, and I'm not doing as much of that as I'd like. More often than not, the urgent overrides the important.
However, there are several short essays I've been meaning to write -- not based on any specific news stories, but extrapolating from some of the disparate trends into a coherent whole. I really want to get these thoughts out there into the public forums to provoke thought and discussion. But I need time to research the background and write it properly. I can't skip this step and just put out my ideas half-baked, as some of these are important to me and I want to present them right so they will be received well. And I'm just not finding that time, which is very frustrating to me. Even more frustrating is when I get scooped by somebody else because I'm taking the time to do it meticulously (I'm tempted to say I'm doing it right, but I may not be). [Aside 6 ]

I've heard the complaint that some bloggers "simply babble ... about stuff they've seen on tv or heard second hand from others." And I hope that people don't think of me in this way. I'm basically writing as I think and speak. And I think a lot. I do try to update regularly, but I don't think I've ever posted just to fill space because I haven't written in a while. [Though I'd have to check the archives to be certain -- and there's that research urge again!]

I definitely hope I'm entertaining and informing and helping people. Knowing that other people are talking and sharing what I've posted gives me a real sense of accomplishment. Writing things that people want to hear reinforces my ability to perceive what's important or interesting and to communicate that effectively. This kind of feedback is both an ego-boost and a means of self-improvement.

But because of the nature of the medium, my means of finding out whether that's happening are limited. I don't trust standard web counters, because any such tool would (a) overcount the number of times that I look at my blog, and (b) undercount all the people reading this through some external aggregator, including LiveJournal. Besides, all that would show is that somebody went to my site. It says nothing about whether they did so on purpose or accidentally, whether they liked what they read or just tuned out immediately.

Now, whenever I express myself publically, it's partly to establish my ethos (credibility). [Aside 7 ] I've tried to build a positive reputation for myself, and I take steps to protect that. As Iago says in Othello:

And this is something I actually do take seriously. My reputation has value, and if handled properly, will repay what I've invested into it. I have most control over how I present myself. Which is why I take such care in my writing, even in what might otherwise be an ephemeral and disposable medium. Secondly, I will defend myself if I feel I've been unfairly slandered. [Aside 8 ] But all that effort is for naught if nobody's listening. And so the other way of building my reputation is by attracting more readers.

Sometimes I fantasize that some big league power broker or media mogul notices my journal, likes what they see, and plucks me from obscurity, like Lana Turner at the malt shop. I get hired as a pundit and do so well that eventually I get well-paid to pontificate on matters. [I know I'm better at logic, researching and writing than Ann Coulter.] That's my ideal pipe-dream and I do know how unlikely it is.

Somewhat more realistically, I have successfully fed information to professional writers that they've published, including Dan Kennedy of the Boston Phoenix and Robert X. Cringely. Although I'd prefer they mention my name, even when they don't, at least I recognize what happened, and maybe the author will remember me later. When I see particularly newsworthy items, I do forward it along, but responses are so rare that I don't do it often.

I really appreciate it when other people link to me. Blogrolls and friends pages demonstrate that people enjoy my writing enough that they want to read more later and/or recommend it to others. Links within other journal posts recognize that I've written something of value. And any such links can lead other curiousity seekers here. Maybe some of them like what they see and link to me as well, which continues the cycle and expands my readership.

Finally, I also like hearing when my posts spark thought or verbal discussion or when people thank me for something I've written. It gives me a good feeling.

A lot of my thoughts about rewards come down to increasing my influence. Now, some may see this as a bad thing. Perhaps someone might say that I'm one of those people trying "to make oneself into a celebrity by self-promotion and making believe that one was in some ways larger-than-life." But that's not my intent, and I hope I don't come across that way.

It seems to me that the drives to improve onesself and to shape one's environment are basic parts of being human. I don't see anything inherently wrong in wanting to be influential. Many of the things I'm writing about are things I see as wrong and needing correction. I can't fix these problems on my own, but the more people I can involve and engage, the better our chances are. It's the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam -- repairing the world.

It's not self-aggrandizement, because I'm trying to promote myself honestly, without exaggeration. I don't want to be a celebrity (defined by Boorstein as people who are famous for being famous); I want to earn recognition through my own merits. And my goal in this is to inform and educate and build a better world. I won't deny there's an aspect of personal gain in all this, but Judaism teaches that yetzer hara -- selfish inclinations -- are not wholly evil. As Midrash states, Scripture teaches that, were it not for the yetzer ha-ra, a man would not build a house, take a wife, beget children, or engage in commerce. All such activities come, as Solomon noted, "from a man's rivalry with his neighbor." [Thanks to Ian for the quote; and here's a fun site with further elaboration and amusing Star Trek references.]

I believe that my intelligence and eloquence are above average. Research comes easy for me. This weblog is one way I can use those gifts to give back. And yet... A few years back I took a class on Rethinking Stress. It proposed that human needs can be simplified into four basic categories: life, love, variety, and recognition. I feel as if that last need isn't being sufficiently met.

BTW, Pollard's What The Blogosphere Needs More Of concludes with a list of things blog writers want to see more, which all rings true for me. [I also like single links of the "hey, did you see?" or "you might be interested in"

This has largely been an exercise in self exploration. I've been feeling that I'm not being sufficiently rewarded for the efforts I'm putting into this blog. The idea of easing up on my blogging does not appeal. I don't think I can write less without having some other outlet to turn to. And writing more quickly evokes feelings of sloppiness which I'm not comfortable with.

So if I'm unwilling to lower my expectations, I need to find some way of increasing the rewards, which means boosting my readership.
Offhand, I see a couple possibilities:

If anybody out there has actually managed to read this far, any other suggestions?

Riba Rambles:
MORE Musings of a Mental Magpie

Thursday, July 24, 2003

I meta-blog I hope you like