2009.05.01 01:00 - The medium isn't the message

Wol Euler was guardian and commenter for this session.

Wol Euler: good morning bertrum
Wol Euler: morning fael
Bertrum Quan: Hi Fael, Wol
Fael Illyar: Morning Wol, Bert :)
Bertrum Quan: Wol, do you have a topic for us?
Wol Euler: no, sorry :)
Wol Euler: do you have one?
Fael Illyar: nice dress, Wol :)
Wol Euler: thank you!
Wol Euler: on sale at Serene Sensations, only 250$

Bertrum starts us off.

Bertrum Quan: Wol, I was looking at your blogspot. What led you to develop a blog?
Wol Euler smiles. Many reasons, among them habit. The typist has two other blogs and contributes to a few wikis
Qt Core: hi all
Wol Euler: morning qt
Wol Euler: blogging is a habit, my alt blogs too.
Wol Euler: it's a way of keeping in touch, and a chance to speak deeply and at length
Wol Euler: not that my blog is particularly deep. My alt does more theorizing and pontificating
Qt Core: (i can get past the idea: who would be so bored/crazy to read what i would write ?)
Fael Illyar: Hi SophiaSharon :)
Fael Illyar: Oh, Hi Qt :)
Wol Euler: morning SophiaSharon
Qt Core: hi fael
SophiaSharon Larnia: Hi :))
Fael Illyar: All I can say about that, Qt, is that you'd be surprised :)
Wol Euler: qt, the people who listen to you here would!
Wol Euler: and maybe you yourself would, in a few months time. To remind you of where you were and how far you've come
Wol Euler: it's like a public diary which others can comment upon. And sometimes people write replies of their own, rather than just commenting, and it turns into a long slow conversation, an exchange of essays
Wol Euler: (we're talking about blogging, SS)
SophiaSharon Larnia: (TY)
Qt Core: i have something that i refuse to call blog as my entries are usually one phrase only (and no, it isn't twitter
SophiaSharon Larnia: me too Qt,thoughts come up and go, i wonder if together, they would mean something, is why i save them
Wol Euler smiles
Bertrum Quan: I read some research that suggested journaling can improve working memory (for the writer). But it takes an addiutional step to have others read one's thoughts.
Wol Euler: yes that is the delight of blogging as a form: that it turns into a community
Qt Core: they are usually comment (witty comment) to things i found in the web (i was thinking about using the personal page of the pabwiki for more serious observations)
SophiaSharon Larnia: :)
Wol Euler: so put the link in your profile already! ;-)

Blogging and journalism.

Bertrum Quan: In RL blogging is increasingly replacing journalism...
Fael Illyar: In SL, blogging has been the journalism from the start?
Qt Core: well, isnt jurnalism professional blogging ?
Wol Euler: yes, very much so. SL newspapers struggle to find an audience, blogs and flickr streams are a more natural fit
Wol Euler: Qt, there is a difference, I think.
Qt Core: yes, it was a broad definition
Wol Euler: Most journalism talks down to its audience, the writer is an expert and the readers are consumers
Wol Euler: blogging is usually peer-to-peer, at least in spirit
Fael Illyar: blog is always your own voice. _you_ speak to the reader.
Wol Euler: yes
Qt Core: (i'm mostly thinking about tech blogs where the writers is an espert (or pretend to be ;-) )
Wol Euler grins
Fael Illyar: well, it's hard to write if you know nothing :)
Wol Euler: pshaw. Generations of politicians prove that untrue.
Qt Core: if only people knowing something were writing a lot of paper and elecrtonic writings would not exist ;-) (it seems it is a sarcastic morning here)
Wol Euler: yeah, maybe we all need a timeout and more coffee :)
SophiaSharon Larnia: :)
Fael Illyar: Well, there is the concept of knowing just enough to be dangerous but not enough to really know your way.
Qt Core: something calming more then coffee maybe
SophiaSharon Larnia: and then lead others Fael

Subjectivity or correctness.

Bertrum Quan: What strikes me about the cultural of blogging is the subjectivity...
Wol Euler: mmm?
Bertrum Quan: Journalism had as it's credo (not always practiced) but an neutrality,
Fael Illyar: Ah, yes, everyone has their own point of view.
Bertrum Quan: But the journalist would try to see all sides... not to become the story in any way...
Fael Illyar: but the beauty about blogs is the trackback thing. You can read other points of view too.
Wol Euler: well, there are bloggers who do that too. There are news blogs and factual blogs and technical-report blogs
Qt Core: one of the bad things about blogging (and one of the main concern for me against starting a real one) is whining, long boring articles with no real content but only whining about things
Fael Illyar: people are going to write their own replies :)
Wol Euler: yes, fael, the connections are what makes it work. You cannot meaningfully reply to a newspaper or a TV reporter
Wol Euler: and their errors usually go unreported and uncorrected
Fael Illyar: and the replies will usually be public too
Wol Euler: if I see an error in your website (call it a blog) then I can publish a correction, and you can change your report
Wol Euler: a newspaper's corretions are printed days later and the original false article lives on in their archives and in public libraries. That is a big disdvantage
Bertrum Quan: Nonetheless the blogger is often the story
Wol Euler: yse of course!
Wol Euler: and there are also people who write in television and newspapers who do that too.
Wol Euler: it's a tool. It has many uses.
SophiaSharon Larnia: i use it as a way to get to the heart of a matter i am thinking about i dont publish it
SophiaSharon Larnia: a word document would work as well
Wol Euler: right, sophia, the act of writing often helps to understand what we are thinking
SophiaSharon Larnia: yes
Fael Illyar: yes, the words we choose often tell us things we hadn't realized.
Bertrum Quan: Yes, that's true. It's interesting to me the journalistic and the blogger paths to what is true. And the blog is especially apt for PaB as the individual expresses reality as they see it, feel it, know it.
Bertrum Quan: But I'm not sure I want to replace all of the reporters at the New York Times with bloggers...
Wol Euler: I don't think anyone is suggesting that.
Fael Illyar: It's still open question what the future news will look like.
Qt Core: we may change the wording and change tthe NYT with blogs (wrote by the same people)
Wol Euler: (sorry, I am in an argumentative mood this morning. I shall take a Nine and try again)

Blogging instead of journalism?  Trusted voices, and the future of reportage.

Bertrum Quan: As newspapers contract, blogging is replacing reporting in some venues
Qt Core: (wol, my comment about sarcasm was more about myself... and a compliment too)
Bertrum Quan: an example is the Seattle PI
Bertrum Quan: The PI used to be a fine newspapers, now it's only online and does not have the staff to report..
Bertrum Quan: I'm all for blogging. My point is the very differnt paths to a sense of what the truth is,
Bertrum Quan: And as you said Wol, blogging does have the aspect a building a community
Bertrum Quan: of building
Wol Euler: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03...e-unthinkable/
Wol Euler: Clay Shirky talking about the future of "news" in a world without news_papers_
Wol Euler: why do we trust them?
Qt Core: (should we trust them ?)
Wol Euler: because they are on paper? Paper can lie as easily as electrons. More easily even, since paper is expensive
Wol Euler: we trust the people who write, and maybe not all of them
Wol Euler: I trust Seymour Hersch and Hendrik Herzberger of the New Yorker, for example
Wol Euler: I read them online with the same confidence that I read their pieces on paper
Bertrum Quan: Those are not blogs...
Wol Euler: Seymour says that his is. It has blog form. It publishes in sequential order, newest at the top, and it publish under his name instead of a Big Famous Company, and I can coment publicly on it.
Wol Euler: maybe you mean "Hersh is not really a blogger"?
Wol Euler: ((sorry, I really need anohter Nine))
Bertrum Quan: Yes, that is what I meant, sorry.
Wol Euler: I'd grant you a difference of quality between Seymour Hersh and myself, of course!
Wol Euler: and a difference of intention.
Bertrum Quan: Hersh has become the story only because his reporting has revealed unpleasant facts. He's been attached then (as liberal or whatever) to create a smokescreen away from his reporting. He is very careful in his reporting to make clear when he is offering his view. But the power of his work is in that sense of deep reporting where he is not the story.
Bertrum Quan: attacked not attached
Wol Euler: what would happen if he published such a piece on his own website? (say, god forbid, that hte New Yorker goes broke)
Wol Euler: would you still feel that his writing was basically true and reliable if it were published only online and only under his name?
Bertrum Quan: Yes, because he has establish credibility with me. And also the form of the piece would also determine whetehr or not he had made himself the story...
Qt Core: isn't it the same issue as we would have if he wrote a book ?
Fael Illyar: Yep, the same issue
Wol Euler: yes, the advantage of writing online is that it can be corrected publicly.
Wol Euler: say that you publish an error on Tuesday in a paper magazine and online.
Wol Euler: when I read that article on Friday, what do I see? the paper still has the error in it! but the website was (could have been) corrected
Wol Euler: books are even worse, they last for dozens or hundreds of years
Wol Euler: worse in the sense of being uncorrected
Bertrum Quan: The web an important new tool.
Qt Core: (thinking about one of my old school math books... so full of wrong answers in the exercise section)
Bertrum Quan: as a path to a sense of the the truth.
Fael Illyar: yep, some things can be done much faster with the web
Qt Core: ;-)
Bertrum Quan: But whwther it is online or not the question of intent and form remain. Is it reporting or is it blogging?
Wol Euler: aaaaaaah.

Comprehension dawns.

Wol Euler: you use the word "blog" to mean "personal and unfounded chatter about my own life", yes?
Wol Euler: whereas I am using the word to mean "a technical tool based on the web"
Bertrum Quan: I'm defining blogging as creative non-tiction where the author is the subject.
Wol Euler smiles. A much better way to phrase it than mine, but it means the same.
Bertrum Quan: The web as tool is very powerful
Wol Euler: in that case, I would of course agree that replacing newspapers with that would be a cultural disaster
Qt Core: (back to the whining danger of blogs i think)
Wol Euler: but the tool called "blogging" is not necessarily trivial and worthless because some people write trash with it.
Wol Euler: I can use my car to kill you, but that does not make all cars murder weapons
Bertrum Quan: Agreed
Fael Illyar: funny how you can talk about different things for an hour without realizing it :)
Wol Euler: yeah
Qt Core: that is an old question about everithing done online being called silly and useles if not just wrong
Bertrum Quan: Feal I don't really think we were talking about different things for an hour.
Fael Illyar: well, in a way you were :)

Fael and SophiaSharon leave us. Truth and identity.

Fael Illyar: Anyhow, I need to go now. See you all later :)
Bertrum Quan: Bye Feal
SophiaSharon Larnia: Bye Fael :)
Wol Euler: bye fael, take care.
Qt Core: i think we were talking about the usual online topic: the media isn't the message
Qt Core: bye
Wol Euler: ha, yes!
SophiaSharon Larnia: me too, back to throwing prims around in my yard :)) take care all
Wol Euler: veyr true!
Wol Euler: bye SS, take care.
Bertrum Quan: bye SS
Qt Core: i have that often about all what is said in chats being false
Qt Core: or about long distance relationships (bot friendship and romantic one) being impossible/fake and such
Wol Euler: it depends on what they think is "me"
Wol Euler: am I my personality, my actions, my habits, my generosity and helpfulness?
Wol Euler: or am I my bones and flesh and eyecolour and intestines?
Wol Euler: I know what I think I am :)
Qt Core: i often ask then if long distyance relationship held by phone are real, then i ask about paper, parchment, papyr and rock tablets ;-)
Wol Euler: sure :)
Wol Euler: I have four false teeth. Am I less true than I was?
Qt Core: i even have glasses... is the world i see the real one ? ;-)
Wol Euler: right!
Qt Core: quite dangerous to start a reality is real discussion here ... dangerous in term of time spent :-)
Wol Euler laughs.
Wol Euler: we've had enough of those...
Wol Euler: (they have happened often enough, not that the topic was exhausted)
Qt Core: i ohten wonder how many levels up in the "meta" scale we go here sometimes
Wol Euler grins
Wol Euler: the air gets too thin for me sometimes
Qt Core: (i love to go meta, btw)

Bertrum leaves; Qt and I talk politics.

Bertrum Quan: Those are good images to end on for me. Need to say goodnight / good morning!
Wol Euler: goodnight bertrum, sleep well.
Qt Core: bye bertrum
Bertrum Quan: Take care, Wol, Qt
Wol Euler: is 1.May a holiday in Italy too?
Qt Core: yes
Wol Euler grins. Yay us.
Qt Core: i'm listening at the radio some of the speaches made from unions'heads
Wol Euler: ah :)
Qt Core: they are helding the national celebration in L'Aquila, where there was the earthquake some weeks ago
Wol Euler: oh yes.
Qt Core: i'm not sure if it is a good idea, ok for the partecipation and show of interest, but thay are also "getting in the feet" of already troubled people
Qt Core: (it wasn't the originally planned location)
Wol Euler: hmmmmm. I see your pooint. Are they there to help, or to score politixal points from others' misfortune?
Qt Core: help i don't think, political gains ? some
Qt Core: have you heard that our government moved the next G8 meeting from La Maddalena an isle in Sardinia area to L'Aquila ?
Wol Euler: I can understand the thinking, such a meeting must bring many hundreds of people into the area. They would give the local economy a great boost
Wol Euler: without the government actually having to spend any mone:)
Qt Core: yes, but some of the firm that already started works at La Maddalena say that they are going to not being paid for the already done work
Wol Euler: ha
Qt Core: don't know, i'm not sure it is a good idea (even more than today's celebration)
Qt Core: time to go something productive even today... if i want to eat something at lunch ;-)
Wol Euler: :)
Wol Euler: eating is good. Go, be productive :)
Wol Euler: enjoy the day, qt
Qt Core: i'll try, ciao!
Wol Euler: ciao bello