onfocus

Well, my weblog prediction for 2004 didn't come true as far as I know. I thought a prominent blogger would be sued for libelous comments. Awareness of legal issues related to weblogs definitely grew in 2004, and Dan Gillmor devoted an entire chapter of We The Media to blog law. I'm hesitant to make another prediction, but I agree there's a weblog backlash on the way. I guess my prediction is that a major old-media (TV, Newspaper, Magazine) personality will start a crusade to discredit weblogs. Rather than stopping existing bloggers, a campaign like this could discourage new people from writing weblogs. (More professionalism in weblogs could have the same effect, ironically. Maybe someone should start a "keep weblogs weird" campaign this year.)

Observation: a weblog without timestamps is like a bicycle without tires. Sure, it sorta looks like a bike—you could even try to ride it—but it would end up being an exercise in frustration.

Update: On second thought, a weblog without timestamps is more like a play without actors. Sure, there's a lot of witty dialog, but...nope...that's not it either.

Update: Can you imagine receiving email without the time it was sent? It would drive me insane. There's a big difference between an email sent at midnight, and one sent at 4am. Same with weblog posts. So I guess a weblog post without a timestamp is like an email without a timestamp.

Update: The irony of not including the time with each update to this post is not lost on me.

Speaking of radios, a trio of Oregon bloggers were interviewed on OPB for a weekly show called Oregon Territory. Infamous locals b!X, Jack Bog, and RoguePundit discussed the state of blogging in our state. If you didn't catch it live, you can listen on the website. (No radio required.)

I did some updating at ORblogs today. The site needed a new design for winter, and the new layout should allow further changes down the road. ORblogs currently has 490 weblogs listed, and it seems like there are two or three added every day. The post excerpt list is getting tough to follow without several visits/day. I added some text to explain what's happening on the front page because I can imagine people are overwhelmed by all of the text when they visit for the first time. (Though the notes are click-vanishing if you have cookies enabled in your browser.)

I've been thinking about this New Science article on weblogs—The 'blog' revolution sweeps across China—and differing approaches to censorship. (Spotted on Joho the Blog: Bo ke.) This part about blogs being good at finding euphamisms is great:

But the net police found it much harder to purge discussion of Yitahutu's closure in the blogosphere. Bloggers are quick to find euphemisms so that they can continue conversation despite keyword filtering.

Keyword filtering and banning seems like a quaint way to control language. If Lakoff, Luntz, and Orwell have taught us anything it's that the power is in redefining words. I think about this whenever I hear the phrase activist judges. If you want to take power away from the judicial branch of the government, one way to do it is to make the word judge itself into a slur. (It worked with the word liberal.) And hey, why not take down the word activist while you're at it? That's so much more effective than trying to stop the use of the words judge or activist. People have to use these words to communicate, and by attaching negative meanings to them you force people to think negatively about the concepts these words represent. Philip K. Dick also nailed this idea:

The basic tool for manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

Chinese bloggers are practicing the new style of word-manipulation to route around an old style of control.

I talked with UO Journalism student Tony Lucero a few days ago, and he included some of our conversation in an article about weblogs in the University paper: Web logs transform expression methods. (Though I call them weblogs.) He mentioned that he's been following Blogger since I was working there, and we talked a bit about that time. I was surprised at how much he knew about the company, but I guess we did have a webcam on every desk back then.

Jesse James Garret resurrected his blog: jjg blog!

Matt's placing some blame on himself for TiVo-ad backlash posts like mine. The PVRblog post that I linked to was picked up and syndicated across many blogs, and Matt feels like he could have kept the negative reaction from happening: Behind the website: when you're at the helm of a shitstorm. Even having a more detailed view of the feature now, I still feel the same way. Will the genuine concerns of weblog authors be dismissed as irrational or reactionary every time they're voiced against a bad business practice? I hope not. (Though maybe I'm just being reactionary to the reactionary label?)

As a non-academic, I love to hear academic labels for things. Did you know that written text that sounds like oral speech is called a hybrid register? That's the best title for a blog I've heard in a long time. Hurry—it's still available!

Laura Gurak gave two talks today at OSU and both were weblog-centric. She described the UThink weblog project at the University of Minnesota, and the exclusively-online weblog academic journal she edits. She also mentioned a system for describing the features of any electronic discourse grouped into the attributes speed, reach, anonymity, and interactivity.

Because I somewhat obsessively note books that are mentioned in talks, I have a list from her talks today that I give you with no context whatsoever:

• Victorian Internet by Tom Standage
• Electric Rhetoric by Kathleen Welch
• Network Nation by Hiltz and Turoff
• Life on the Screen by Sherry Turkle
• Computers as Theatre by Brenda Laurel
• Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig
• Yale Web Style Guide

Some other interesting reading that she mentioned—

• CultureCat (by Clancy, a Ph.D. student in her department)
• The Web Credibility Project at Stanford
• Educational Blogging by Stephen Downes

I met and had lunch with Laura today where we discussed everything from weblogs (of course), to disruptive academic technologies, to the tyranny of templates, to tech avatars.

I've been working in and around (and publishing my own) weblogs for so long now that I've had glasses and glasses of the blog kool-aid many times over. I already know the benefits of sharing stuff freely in a public way, even though my writing isn't perfected and polished here as I would strive for in a book or article. It was really surprising to me to hear resistance to the concept of weblogs from the OSU faculty.

Update: The OSU Barometer covered her talk: Leading Internet scholar addresses blogs in education

It's late notice now, but Laura Gurak—editor of a scholarly journal about weblogs called Into the Blogosphere—is speaking at OSU tomorrow in MU 206 at noon. The title of her talk is Steering Technology or Technology Steering?, and is about managing technology in our personal and professional lives. She's the author of Cyberliteracy, and a book about online protests, Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace. It looks like she has a weblog at LauraGurakBlog. Her talk is open to the public.

William Gibson is blogging again.