“Back in the spring, Dr. Tesla was able to achieve readings on his transformer of up to a millions volts. It does not take a prophet to see where this is headed. He is already talking in private about something he calls a ‘World-System’, for producing huge amounts of electrical power that anyone can tap in for free, anywhere in the world, because it uses the planet as an element in a gigantic resonant circuit. He is naïve enough to think he can get financing for this, from Pierpont, or me, or one or two others. It has escaped his mighty intellect that no one can make any money off an invention like that. To put up money for research into a system of free power would be to throw it away, and violate – hell, betray – the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be.” (…) “If such a system is ever produced,” Scarsdale Vibe was saying, “it will mean the end of the world not just’ as we know it’ but as anyone knows it. It is a weapon Professor, surely you see that – the most terrible weapon the world has seen, designed to destroy not armies or matériel, but the very nature of exchange, out Economy’s long struggle to evolve up out of the fish-market anarchy of all battling all to the rational systems of control we enjoy at present.”

Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, p. 33/34

“An author who is writing specifically for a public is not really writing; it is the public that is writing, and for this reason the public can no longer be a reader; reading only appears to exist, actually it is nothing. This is why works created to be read are meaningless: no one reads them. This is why it is dangerous to write for other people, in order to evoke the speech of others and reveal them to themselves: the fact is that other people do not want to hear their own voices; they want to hear someone else’s voice, a voice that is real, profound, troubling like the truth.” p. 365

Maurice Blanchot, ‘Literature and the Right to Death’ in The Station Hill Blanchot Reader, Barrytown, Station Hill, 1999, p. 359-399.

Sometimes I can read Blanchot, and what he writes I find beautiful and deeply true. Sometimes I cannot read Blanchot, and what he writes is to me as words from an ideal, transcendental realm, unconnected to lived reality.

Let’s do a deconstruction.

I found a post on blogging by a professional from the marketing-world. Funny enough I found it by searching for mp3’s of James Chance and the Contortions, namely here: http://somevelvetblog.blogspot.com/.

The piece originally was posted here: http://www.mpdailyfix.com/ and comes from here: http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/kintz/, exactly: http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/kintz/archive/0001/01/01/1120.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN.

I’d like to deconstruct some of the assumptions in this post to bring into perspective how much the view of the marketing-world, and their idea of corporate blogging is rooted in an idea of publishing that is superseded by blogging. The funny thing is that the conlusions of the research and the advises taken from it, do correspond quite well with my own view on/feeling about blogging. But I’d say those things should’ve been clear from the start…

I will quote the whole text Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore from Eric Kintz — in italics — and add my commentary.

“Thou shall post every day” is the most fundamental and most well known principle of blogging….

— It never was. Only marketeers who’d like to reach out to an audience and have that audience stay with their blog, want this. Why would you like an audience to stay? The only real reason I can think of is: Google-ad revenue. Power? Having people read what you scribbled? My god, there are millions like you… Conversation? That comes from putting up good content. Not from blogging daily.

Every new blogger is warned about “the” ultimate rule and is confronted with the pressure of a day going by with no new post. Every one has in mind the examples of successful bloggers, like Robert Scoble at Microsoft, who post several times a day. Daily posting shows that you are serious about blogging, generates traffic and drives reader loyalty, as readers come back daily to check your new posts. You cannot be successful if you do not go by the rule, right? RIGHT?

— No. See above. Who wants to be like Robert Scoble?

Wrong. Daily posts are a legacy of a Web 1.0 mindset and early Web 2.0 days (meaning 12 months ago!). The pressure around posting frequency will ultimately become a significant barrier to the maturity of blogging. Here are 10 reasons why.

— Well, you have my attention now.

#1- Traffic is generated by participating in the community; not daily posting – The blogosphere doubles in size every 6 months and cutting through the clutter will become ever more difficult with a new blog emerging every second. Daily posting deals with the clutter by adding more clutter.

— Who cares about traffic? Only the ones who have (Google-)ads going? Participating in a community is important, but not because it generates traffic. (Want traffic? Write a bot that visits). But the next sentence is really troubling, it actually states that the idea is that the ideal is that we should go through the whole blogosphere every day… As if there is one blogosphere where everybody talks about the same subjects, a blogosphere that one can keep an eye on, in its whole. That idea is wrong. At least since Bacon and Locke discovered that there were more books around than they could ever read in a whole lifetime, it has been impossible to keep track of everything going on. The fact that the amount of postings doubles in size every 6 months is meaningless in this respect. One can only follow a fracture of it — indeed a few “communities”-of-interests that one participates in. “Daily posting deals with the clutter by adding more clutter” is exactly what blogging is about, and has always been about. Is that a paradox? It is what writes have always done. Bacon and Locke dealt with “information overload” by adding to it: making summaries, indexes, their own notes and commentaries.

Although this strategy made sense 12 months ago and still makes sense for the top bloggers, its effectiveness diminishes with every new blog created. Traffic is generated by successful bloggers linking to you either in their posts or in their blogroll. Mack at Viral Garden has a series of great posts on the importance of joining the community.

— Again: who cares about traffic? 99,9% of bloggers will never receive links from the top-bloggers (who are not characteristic of blogging at all, I think). Blogging goes on, and blooms in the realm of 1 to 30 visitors a day.

#2 – Traffic is irrelevant to your blog’s success anyway– Unless you specifically target bloggers like Bruce, are a blogging consultant or blog about your latest book, traffic is irrelevant to you. What matters most is whether you are reaching your target audience (which may be narrow and focused), not necessarily how many people read your posts. Engaging with the audience you want to have a relationship with is a much smarter strategy than posting frequently.

— Ah, now we’re talking. “Traffic is irrelevant. Engage with your audience!” True. Better still would be “Traffic is irrelevant. Write about what you are passionate. Don’t think about an audience.” Actually that’s already what Rebecca Blood advised years ago.

#3- Loyal readers coming back daily to check your posts is so Web 1.0 – As the blogosphere matures, the number of new readers and bloggers will decrease and loyal readers are going to matter more. I have heard many bloggers tell me that they will lose reader loyalty if these readers come back daily and do not see any new posts. This perception is still very strong although irrelevant. Loyal readers subscribe to your blog via RSS feeds and have new content pushed to them. They will remain loyal because they have subscribed, not because you post frequently.

— Now it starts to be interesting. Loyal readers subscribe through RSS. (Is that true? I subscribe to over a hundred feeds, yet prefer to visit the blogs themselves. Going through feeds is what I do when I’m offline). Actually the whole idea of loyal readers is I think much more “under threat” because most internet-users will find a blog thanks to a Google-search, and then migth explore that particular niche by clicking a few links (for instance from the linkslist or blogroll of that blog.) Or they might — technorati-style — follow a certain subject (technically a ‘tag’), being fed with bits and pieces from different blogs that are ‘tagged’ as that subject. In that way people read much more through different blogs than follow the blogs they are loyal to.

#4 – Frequent posting is actually starting to have a negative impact on loyalty: Seth Godin (a frequent blogger) has a very interesting theory.According to him, RSS fatigue is already setting in. With too many posts, you run the risk of losing loyal readers, overwhelmed by the clutter you generate. Readers will start to tune off if your blog takes up too much of their time.

— Well, what is the problem there? The only rule is: write what you are passionate about even if that means putting up enormous amounts of texts daily. If your text is a good one, you will be read, maybe not today or tomorrow, but in a few weeks time, or even later on. Is there a problem with newspapers, thousands daily writing about sometimes the exact same subjects? (A good style of writing is often one that uses words economically, that is true, and something else).

#5: Frequent posting keeps key senior executives and thought leaders out of the blogosphere – My colleagues and industry peers cite bandwidth constraints as the number one reason for not blogging. They are absolutely right: frequent posting is not very compatible with a high pressure job. As an example, not one single blog is authored by a senior corporate marketing blogger in the top 25 marketing blogs listed by Mack. Not only does the blogosphere lose valuable thought leadership, it runs the risk of being overlooked by these very same marketers.

— Ha ha. Those marketeers, concerned about the senior executives and ‘thought leaders’ –, the thought leaders are publishing on the web. (Okay, this text is about corporate blogging). And yes, blogging is time consuming. Did anyone ever say something else? Did anyone ever say that everyone should blog? Of course the senior executives are not blogging. Of course we hardly have fulltime nurses blogging. Is that a problem? Is it a problem that senior executives are not writing novels, shooting movies, uploading their favorite recipes?

A recent study by Forrester found a reluctance among marketers to shift from more tried-and-true online channels like search and e-mail marketing. Just 13 percent reported using blogs or social networks in marketing, and 49 percent said they had no plans to do so in the next year. If the blogosphere wants to become more mainstream (vs. being the latest hype), frequent posting and required bandwidth are undoubtedly a major barrier to adoption.

— Good. The less marketeers use the blogosphere, the better; also blogging might be exactly the opposite of marketing. But this sentence is troublesome: ” If the blogosphere wants to become more mainstream (vs. being the latest hype)”. Hmm, if almost everybody is blogging — 75 year old retired managers, 15 year olds from the MySpace-generation, and everybody in between — how to become, well, more ‘mainstream’ than that? The problem is here: blogging (and the internet in general) has shown that there is exactly no reason whatsoever to know who Madonna is, it has shown that ‘mainstream’ is an invention of mass-media — or at least a mass-media-phenomenon.

#6: Frequent posting drives poor content quality – The pressure of daily posting drives many bloggers to re-purpose other bloggers’ content or give quick un-insightful comments on the news. Few bloggers have enough time (or expertise) to write daily thought leadership pieces, thus adding to the clutter. Ben at the Church of the Customer Blog explores the 1% rule and cites the Wikipedia example: 25 million readers visit Wikipedia every month, but the number of people who actually contribute content to Wikipedia is about 1-2 percent of total site visitors. I would argue that the same is valid for the blogosphere as a whole where most of the original high value content is driven by 1% of the bloggers. Some of the most insightful –and most quoted- marketing thought blogging leaders are actually infrequent posters, from Sam Decker to Charlene Li or Randi Baseler.

— Good. Point taken. I think this is largely true as long as bloggers think they have to write about ‘what goes on in the media’. But the 1% original content sounds too pessimistic. It does not take into account that a lot of blogging exactly consists — not of putting up ‘original content’ — but in constructing a distributed conversation on a certain subject. Bloggers who ‘live’ in the same niche, react to each other. That is blogging. What is original content anyway?

#7: Frequent posting threatens the credibility of the blogosphere – as many bloggers re-purpose existing content under the pressure of daily posting, they do not take the time to do any sort of due diligence and conduct effective research. Errors snowball in the blogosphere as they spread from one blogger to the other. The collective wisdom of user generated content was supposed to provide an alternative to biased traditional media content – it is instead echoing the thoughts and biases of a few.

— Blogging is not journalism. Yet I agree that, if one takes blogging seriously, one should try to check sources, give the right references, et cetera. But I know I do not always do that. It’s the ‘freedom’ of blogging — in opposition to journalism — to be inexact, and say “it is inexact, sorry, but that’s how I felt”. An important part of our media literacy should be our competence of checking sources, being able to ascertain the credibility of a text.

#8 – Frequent posting will push corporate bloggers into the hands of PR agencies – As they struggle with bandwidth constraints as well as peer pressure to join the blogosphere, more and more companies will resort to partnering with their PR agencies to create blogs. The blogosphere will in turn lose some of its effectiveness and value.

— Yes. I think that is true. But do I care? I do not read those blogs. They hardly exist in my world. Btw: PR and blogging are very closely connected, at least in the Netherlands, and at least ever since financial minister Gerrit Zalm started a blog. Again: we readers should be able to tell what the interests are that are represented by a certain blog.

#9 – Frequent posting creates the equivalent of a blogging landfill – According to Technorati, only 55% of bloggers post after 3 months of existence. The pressure of the first months to write frequently certainly contributes to people abandoning their blogs. Is that in the blogosphere’s best interest to have a third of its participants frustrated by their initial efforts?

— Does the blogosphere care? Again I do not see what the problem is. A third of the people who start a blog find out that it is quite an effort to blog. It is not everybodies idea of a pasttime, apparently not everybodies idea of a way of dealing with the sheer amount of interesting stuff available. I agree that nobody should say that one should blog every day. (Whoever said that to begin with?)

#10 – I love my family too much – Ann pointed out to me this cool blog that highlights the challenges of blogging addiction – Bloggers Anonymous. Very funny…..

If you want to be a top 50 Technorati blogger, you will most probably still need to post several times a day. But for the rest of us, we should think seriously about the added value of frequent blogging. Actually, according to Technorati, only 11% of all blogs update weekly or more. What will matter more and more is what you write and how you engage, not how often you write.

— If you want to become a top 50 Technorati-blogger you are either ultra-american (culturally speaking) or you have a very strange idea of the world. It is as if you take up cycling as a pasttime with the ambition to win the Tour of France. So I agree whole-hearted with “What will matter more and more is what you write and how you engage, not how often you write”. But I think it has never been different.

As the blogosphere matures, the measure of success will shift from traffic to reader loyalty. As Seth Godin says in his post, “blogging with restraint, selectivity, cogency and brevity (okay, that’s a long way of saying “making every word count”) will use attention more efficiently and ought to win.” As for me, I will continue to post only when I have something to say.

— Well, I on the contrary sometimes blabber on. Also because I never know what will turn out the be important… not beforehand.

Just now read Jodi Dean’s paper on blogging for Hyperpolis. Very good, makes quite a few points I would’ve liked to make. I hope it’s allright with her that I already ‘reblog’ & pick some quotes (btw, these quotes do not capture her main point really):

“To be sure, words beyond control are a noted feature of writing. Academics, journalists, and bookwriters have long been familiar with the ways our words take on a life of their own. Blogging accentuates this new life. It makes more people aware of the ways that their words are not theirs.”

“Bloggers imagine communities. In part, they mark this imagining with their link lists. Yet, these lists are as (if not more) changing, uncertain, and porous as any other border.”

“My experience with blogs is that they allow for slower reflection, the emergence of spaces of affinity through specialized writing, and the experience of a presentation and cultivation of a self. These three attributes of blogs—reflection, affinity, self-cultivation—necessarily traverse the old liberal division of the world into public and private spheres.”

“A critical theory of blogging cannot extend out of presumptions of journalism, punditry, and relations to mainstream media. Instead, it has to begin from the communicative practices specific to blogging, practices that install confrontations with difference, with otherness.”

From Jodi Dean, Blogging Difference, 2006, paper for Hyperpolis, see http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2006/10/blogging_differ.html.

With regard to the last point I cite here — basically Jodi Dean’s conclusion — I agree in principle that yes, a critical theory of blogging should start with looking at communicative practices that are specific to blogging. But there are various types of blogs: some are focussed on conversations, some (like that of Jodi Dean) are indeed confrontations with the other (but isn’t all talk, and all writing in a sense a confrontation with otherness?) And then there are also the blogs, (notably some early ones) that are not conversational at all, that do not even want the confrontation, or who prefer to not even look at comments, if there are any. (Hey, why do I write this here and not in the comments of Jodi Dean’s blog? That characterizes me…. — supposing that trackbacking does the job?). Two extremes: there’s the blog as ‘my turf’, ‘my voice’ — and there’s the blog as an invitation to chat. And on a lot of blogs there’s not much ‘otherness’ of ‘confrontation’ going on… I should say that Jodi Dean tackles this issue as well in her paper (and looks at how a blog is also ‘me talking’), yet she emphasises the confrontation with otherness where I’d put more emphasis on the ‘publish for no public’-aspect.

Back in 1986 Michael Heim wrote in his book Electric Language: “A month in hyper-space can scatter the brain. Traditional books offer readers respite from hyperactivity. The book’s definitive, closed, linear argument lets mind and sensibility enjoy moments of inner harmony. Linear text offers the kind of contemplative thinking that goes beneath the surface” (xvi). Read “web” or ‘internet” or “blogosphere” for “hyperspace”. I’d say this is still true. But how much of this respite/contemplation do we need it to keep the world (and culture) running?

(Copy-pasted the quote from Dennis Jerz’s http://jerz.setonhill.edu/resources/blogtalk/index.html).

“The transition from family and dynastic governement supported by the loyalties of tradition to popular was the outcome primarily of technological discoveries and inventions working a change in the customs by which men had been bound together.” p. 144

“Regarded as an idea, democracy is not an alternative to other principles of associated life. It is the idea of community life itself.” p. 148

“It is an ideal in the only intellegible sense of an ideal: namely the tendency and movement of some thing which exists carried to its final limit, viewed as completed, perfected. Since things do not attain such fulfillment but are in actuality distracted and interfered with, democracy in this sense is not a fact and never will be. But neither in this sense is there or has there ever been anything which is a community in its full measure, a community unalloyed by alien elements.” p. 148

“Associated or joint activity is a condition of the creation of a community. But association itself is physical and organic, while communal life is moral, that is emotionally, intellectually, consciously sustained.” p. 151

“Associated activity needs no explanation; things are made that way. But no amount of aggregated collective action of itself constitutes a community.” p. 151

“Interactions, transactions, occur de facto and the results of interdepence follow. But participation in activities and sharing in results are additive concerns. They demand communication as a prerequisite.” p. 152

[How to arrive at a Great Community?]
“… the perfecting of the means and ways of communication of meanings so that genuinely shared interest in the consequences of interdependent activities may inform desire and effort and thereby direct action.” p. 155

“[K]nowledge is a function of association and communication; it depends upon tradition, upon tools and methods socially transmitted, developed and sanctioned.” p. 158

“There can be no public without full publicity in respect to all consequences which concern it. Whatever obstructs and restricts publicity, limits and distorts public opinion and checks and distorts thinking on social affairs.” p. 167

“Science is converted into knowledge in its honorable and emphatic sense only in application. Otherwise it is truncated, blind, distorted.” p. 174

“Record and communication are indispensable to knowledge. Knowledge cooped up in private consciousness is a myth, and knowledge of social phenomena is peculiarly dependent upon dissemination, for only by distribution can such knowledge be either obtained or tested. A fact of community life which is not spread abroad so as to be a common possession is a contradiction in terms.” p. 176-177

“Public opinion , even if it happens to be correct, is intermittent when it is not the product of methods of investigation and reporting constantly at work. It appears only in crises. Hence its “rightness” concerns only an immediate emergency.” p. 178

“But its meaning [of the news] depends upon relation to what it imports, to what its social consequences are”. p.180

“The function of art has always been to break through the crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness. Common things, a flower, a gleam of moonlight, the song of a bird, not things rare and remote, are means with which the deeper levels of life are touched so that they spring up as desire and thought. This process is art.” p. 184

“We have but toouched lightly and in passing upon the conditions which must be fulfilled if the Great Society is to become a Great Community; a society in which the ever-expanding and intricately ramifying consequences of associated activities shall be known in the full sense of that word, so that an organized, articulate Public comes into being.” p. 184

“The highest and most diffficult kind of inquiry and a subtle, delicate, vivid and responsive art of communication must take possession of the physical machinery of transmission and circulation and breathe life into it. When the machine age has thus perfected its machinery it will be a means life and not its despotic master.” p. 184

“Democracy will come into its own, for democracy is a name for a life of free and enriching communion.” p. 184

“But while associated behavior is, as we have already noted, a universal law, the fact of association does not of itself make a society. This demands (…) perception of the consequences of a joint activity and of the distinctive share of each element in producing it.” p. 188

“Individuals find themselves cramped and depressed by absorption of their potentialities in some mode of association which has been institutionalized and become dominant. They may think they are clamoring for a purely personal liberty, but what they are doing is to bring into being a greater liberty to share in other associations, so that more of their individual potentialities will be released and their personal experience enriched.” p. 193-194

“Vision is a spectator; hearing is a participator. Publication is partial and the public which results is partially informed and formed until the meanings it purveys pass from mouth to mouth.” p. 219

Reading through Dewey’s famous and still very inspiring book on ‘the public’, from 1927. Still 2 chapters to go. Here’s my digest/summary.

All quotes from: John Dewey, The Public and its Problems, Swallow Press, Ohio UP / New York, Henry Holt & Company, 1927.

” [T]he consequences [of human actions] are of two kinds, those which affect the persons directly engaged in a transaction, and those which affect others beyond those immediately concerned. In this distinction we find the germ of the distinction between the private and the public.” p. 12

“When the consequences of an action are confined, or are thought to be confined, mainly to the person directly engaged in it, the transaction is a private one.” p. 12-13

“Yet if it is found that the consequences of conversation extend beyond the two directly concerned, that they affect the welfare of many others, the act acquires a public capacity.” p. 13

“The distinction between private and public is thus in no sense equivalent to the distinction between individual and social (…). Many private acts are social; their consequences contribute to the welfare of the community or affect its status and prospects. In the broad sense any transaction deliberately carrried on between two or more persons is social in quality. It is a form of associated behavior and its consequences may influence further associations.” p. 13

“It is not without significance that etymologically “private” is defined in opposition to “official”, a private person being one deprived of public position.” p. 15

“The obvious external mark of the organization of a public or of a state is thus the existence of officials. Governement is not the state, for that includes the public as well as the rulers charged with special duties and powers. The public, however, is organized in and through those officers who act in behalf of its interests.” p. 27-28

“[T]he problem of discovering the state (…) is a practical problem of human beings living in association with one another, of mankind generically.” p. 32

“[T]he state is the organization of the public effected through officials for the protection of the interests shared by its members.” p. 33

“[O]ur conception gives a criterion for determining how good a particular state is: namely the degree of organization of the public which is attained, and the degree which its officers are so constituted as to perform their function of caring for public interests.” p. 33

“But there is no a priori rule which can be laid down and by which when it is followed a good state will be brought into existence. In no two ages or places is there the same public.” p. 33

“The formation of states must be an experimental proces.” p. 33

“Those indirectly and seriously afffected for good or for evil form a group distinctive enough to require recognition and a name. The name selected is The Public.” p. 35

“What is the public? If there is a public, what are the obstacles in the way of its recognizing and articulating itself? Is the public a myth? Or does it come into being only in periods of marked social transition when crucial alternative issues stand out, such as that between throwing one’s lot in with the conservation of established institutions or with forwarding new tendencies?’ p. 123

“How can a public be organized, we may ask, when literally it does not stay in place? Only deep issues or those which can be made to appear such can find a common denominator among all the shifting and unstable relationships.” p. 140

“Attachement is a very different function of life from afffection. Affections will continue as long as the heart beats. But attachement requires something more than organic causes. The very things which stimulate and intensify affections may undermine attachements. For these are bred in tranquil stability; they are nourished in constant relationships. Acceleration of mobility disturbs them at their root. And without abiding attachements associations are too shifting and shaken to permit a public readily to locate and identify itself.” p. 140-141

“The new era of human relationships in which we live is one marked by mass production for remote markets, by cable and by telephone, by cheap printing, by railway and steam navigation.” p. 141

“The ties which hold men together in action are numerous, though and subtle. But they are invisible and intangible. We have the physical tools as never before. The thoughts and aspirations congruous with them are not communicated, and hence are not common. Without such communication the public will remain shadowy and formless, seeking spasmodically for itself, but seizing and holding its shadow rather than its substance. Till the Great Society is converted into a Great Community, the Public will remain in eclipse. Communication can alone create a great community.” p. 142

Just quickly read 2 articles that seemed interesting.

“Structure of Self-Organized Blogosphere” — (language: international english of the Chinese variety) — pdf here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/math.ST/0607361. Which is ‘one of those’ statistical analyses of linking in the blogosphere. Conclusions: ‘the blogging network has small-world property’ and the distribution of links-in and links-out follows a power-law. In other words: here’s a sort of statistical ‘proof’ of the common knowledge that a few celebrity blogs receive lots of incoming links, and most blogs hardly receive links. I’m not so interested in this kind of network-research, it seems to be more about (statistical/mathematical) network-theory, than about communication, flow of information &c. tho’ it’s possible that I miss the point.

“Copy and Paste Literacy: Literacy Practices in the Production of a MySpace Profile – An Overview” by Dan Perkel strikes me as more interesting: a simple and to the point analysis of how MySpace is used. He argues that one could see MySpace as an “informal learning environment that fosters the development of new literacies”. One could state that of a lot of similar enviroments and softwares, I’d say, yet this overview, accompanied by different theories about ‘literacy’ I found worthwhile reading. It is clear and straightforward in its approach — looking at how copy & pasting of code, links, images, music and video is used in MySpace. Although, again it does not go further than confirming what one (well, I) already believe(s). But that’s no so bad… Text is online here: http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~dperkel/media/dperkel_literacymyspace.pdf.

Found these papers thanks to http://jilltxt.net.

Perkel points to the ‘problem’, for theories of literacy, that copy&paste and remixing is generally not seen as ‘writing’. (Well, he writes: “However, the importance of copying and pasting code does not easily fit in the common conventions of reading and writing, consumption and production.”) But what if we’d go back to antique rhetorics, where learning to deal with the tropes and commonplaces, is part of learning to write & construct an argument. To really make that analogy would be stretching the point — yet I’d say that ‘writing’ is also learning to use “pre-fab elements” in a good way. (And then the question is: what is that good way?)

Nice (well, useful, quotable) quotes:

“Genre is the conceptual glue that binds social activity to technical activity. In order to understand what literacy might be, one must pay attention to the particularities of social activity, to the particularities of media, and also to the generic forms and competencies that groups share in their use of a media.” (p. 3)

“Bakhtin argues that, “genres must be fully mastered in order to be manipulated freely,” implying both a mastery of both recognizing generic forms and using them, or generic competencies (80).” (p. 6)

“HTML and CSS, like other programming languages, encourage a particular way of thinking about problems. For example, learning to use them requires learning how to think modularly. The rhetoric concerning the separation of content and style, however useful, embodies a certain way of understanding communication.” (p. 8)

“The idea that same message in different form is still the same message implies that social context of use, the specifics of the activity, and the specifics of the medium have little importance in determining meaning. Regardless of how one feels about this rhetoric, learning to think this way, uncritically, may have important consequences.” (p. 8)

“[H]ow good of a learning environment is MySpace for mastering the representational form and technical competency of web programming? Certainly, it provides an introduction to the medium, and some even may learn more about HTML and CSS as a part of trying to customize their profiles. However, the way in which the MySpace designers use CSS works completely against the point of style sheets.” (p. 8) (Hear me say: “right you are!”)

Now go on to read: Henry Jenkins, “Learning by Remixing”: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/07/learning_by_remixing.html.

Here’s a bit from the Encyclopedie, entry on ‘Newspapers’, probably penned by Diderot “[Newspapers were invented] for the comfort of those who are either too busy or too lazy to read entire books. It is a means of satisfying one’s curiosity, and of becoming a savant on the cheap”.

(Quote here from Mattelart, The Invention of Communication, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996 (French org. 1994), p. 34.)

And then I also read Reconstruction in Philosophy of John Dewey. It’s a collection of lectures, given in Tokyo, in 1920, shortly after the First World War. I picked it up because it was the only Dewey-book in the Jan van Eyck-library. It might not be among Dewey’s main works, but I found it extremely inspiring and clear and accessible — in fact it is a perfect introduction into philosophy from the standpoint of pragmatism. Well, I’d say it’s the best introduction to philosophy I ever read. Wish I’d read this when I was 18.

Dewey outlines very clearly how the divide between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge came about; what is wrong with the philosophical antitheses of reason and experience, ideal and real. What is wrong with the spectator view of knowledge; what is the importance of the scientific method. What is wrong with the divisions like art/imagination/aesthetics on the one hand and science/practical knowledge on the other. Et cetera.

Of course there are problems as well with Dewey’s approach, and a few times he seems to come close to a sort of optimistic view of life that reminds one a bit of self-help books. But that seems to be the price to pay when philosophy is reconstructed from practical life…

“If this lecture succeeds in leaving in your mind as a reasonable hypothesis the idea that philosophy originated not out of intellectual material, but out of social and emotional material, it will also succeed in leaving with you a changed attitude toward traditional philosophies.” p. 25

Then Dewey goes on to describe Bacon’s scientific method and its importance for changing philosophy and the concept of knowledge: away from relying on tradition; involvement with the processes of life. Actually the reconstruction in philosophy that Dewey is after is “the endeavor to undo the entanglement [– that philosophy is caught in, due to the impossible combination of Baconian method and older traditions –] and to permit the Baconian aspirations to come to a free and unhindered expression.” p. 52

“True method, that which Bacon would usher in, is comparable to the operation of the bee who, like the ant, collects material from the external world, but unlike that industrious creature attacks and modifies the collected stuff in order to make it yield its hidden treasure.” p. 32

(Pragmatism is not common sense philosophy, on the contrary).

“Men who are thrown back upon “common sense” when they appeal to philosophy for some general guidance are likely to fall back on routine, the force of some personality, strong leadership or on the pressure of momentary circumstances.” p. 100

“In fact, the whole conception of knowledge as beholding and noting is fundamentally an idea connected with esthetic enjoyment and appreciation where the environment is beautiful and life is serene, and with esthetic repulsion and depreciation where life id troubled, nature morose and hard.” p. 115-116

“When the belief that knowledge is active and operative takes hold of men, the ideal realm is no longer something aloof and separate; it is rather the collective of imagined possibilities that stimultates men to new efforts and realizations.” p. 118

“If knowing were habitually conceived of as an active and operative, after the analogy of experiment guided by hypothesis, or of invention guided by imagination of some possibility, it is not too much to say that the first effect would be to emancipate philosophy from all the epistemological puzzles which now perplex it.” p. 123 (This is 1920, so way before Popper, Feyerabend, Lakatos).

“[T]hinking takes it departure from specific conflicts in experience that occasion perplexity and trouble.” p. 138

“They [theories] are tools. As in the case of all tools, their value resides not in themselves but in their capacity to work shown in the consequences of their use.” p. 145

“If ideas, meanings, conceptions, notions, theories, systems are instrumental to an active reorganization of the given environment, to a removal of some specific trouble and perplexity, then the test of their validity and value lies in accomplishing this work. If they succeed in their office, they are reliable, sound, valid, good, true. If they fail to clear up confusion, to eliminate defects, if they increase confusion, uncertainty and evil when they are acted upon, then they are false, Confirmation, corrobation, verification lie in works, consequences.” p. 156

“Now it is true that social arrangements, laws, institutions are made for man, rather than that man is made for them; that they are means and agencies of human welfare and progress. But they are not means for obtaining something for individuals, not even happiness. They are means of creating individuals.” p. 194

“Society is the process of associating in such ways that experiences, ideas, emotions, values are transmitted and made common.” p. 207

Acoording to Dewey society is always ‘in the making’, it moves, it consists of communication of experience between individuals, hence both the individual and the organization (‘State’) are subordinate to this active process.

“[O]rganization is never an end in itself. It is a means of promoting association, of multiplying effective points of contact between persons, directing their intercourses into the modes of greatest fruitfulness.” p. 206-207.

All quotes from John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, Enlarged Edition, Beacon Press, Boston, 1948 (1920).