Why Blog?
I have been mulling over the question "Why should I blog?"
If you look at my entries over the last month you would notice the
primary subject was the War in Iraq. No one is pestering me for
interviews or position paper. As far as I can tell no one has linked to
anything I have written. Why do I bother to write it?
Here are the reasons I came up with for blogging.
- I like the technology and it give me an excuse to learn some new things. I have learned how to parse RSS feeds in Perl and how to write MovableType plugin and use the MT libraries.
- It's trendy. I like being in on web trends.
- I like web surfing, and I want to share what I find as well as keep a record somewhere where I can access it later.
- I like writing, but don't have time to write a novel and don't think it's likely my opinions will be picked up in the paper.
- Blogging give me a way to connect with groups of people who are writing about the news in different ways from different perspectives.
- I have always liked the idea of having a web page, because self-publishing is just neat. I mean if we have "Freedom of the Press" in the U.S. it is meaningless if you don't have a press. The web let's me have a press without all the expense of ink and distribution.
- Self-expression is a deep part of my psyche. I want to know and understand myself and others. Blogging is a social activiy to some degree as you interact with a larger community of bloggers.
- Blog aggregation is serving to detect memes very quickly. I would like my thoughts to be part of this. I want my vote to count in the chaos and millieu of other voices.
- It's anti monopoly. As Larry Lessig points out media is incredibly concentrated into a few owners now. "In 1992, 70% of prime time television was produced by independent producers; today, 75% is owned by networks. There are 91 "major" TV markets; 80% of them are owned by 6 companies. In 1947, 80% of newspapers were independent; that number is below 20% today. In the 1970s, 10% of first run films in theaters was foreign; that number today is less than .5%." Link My blogging is a voice of independant media, my voice.
