Sandhill Trek

whyBlog - continued...

Two more emails this morning to add to the "Why do we blog?" compendium.  Terry Frazier says,

I began blogging in the summer of 2002 because I wanted to experiment with this new micro-publishing method discovered while researching cross-media publishing tools. I got some blogging software and started to experiment. It seems to me this period of 2002-2003 was the grass roots heyday of blogging -- lots of new blog tools, lots of new bloggers, a new movement was forming.  I made a lot of friends and formed a network of connections I do not believe I could have made any other way.

Today that network stretches, literally, around the world. And I blog to stay in touch with them. I still blog to learn, whether through expanded blog conversations with others or simple technical learning as I play with new tools and techniques. I also blog as a way of sharing what I learn, and for creating a "repository of me" as a courtesy for interested friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. The blog has become the defacto reference point for anyone who wishes to learn about another. If you don't have a blog, do you really exist? The answer is clearly yes, but I still find blogging useful in this regard.

So there you have it: I blog to learn, connect, experiment, share, and inform. Not bad for a guy sitting around in his pajamas at the computer.

Dave Winer (Scripting News post here) says,

I honestly really don't know why I blog.

When I started blogging it was mostly to get a bunch of stuff off my plate, ideas I couldn't do anything with, things I wanted even if I couldn't create them. I hoped other people would read my ideas and someone would create what I wanted, and therefore increase happiness. Over the years I learned that this very rarely happens. People really want to come up with the ideas, even more than they want to be successful.

Once I started blogging it got addictive. So the most direct answer would be "I blog because I am addicted to blogging."

I also like the idea that I can have a dinner with people I don't know in almost any city in the world.

Why Do We Blog?

A week or so ago I gave myself the assignment of conducting a survey for the IT Kitchen:  "Why do you blog?" I asked.  I like easy answers, and by asking others perhaps I hoped to find the easy answers for myself.  Certainly, I thought, it would be valuable to compile insights from some of the articulate digital self publishers known as "bloggers."  Little did I know it would turn into a hobby.  Here are reflections from thirty-five bloggers, an even three dozen if you count me.

...or we could...

Yes. Let's. We'll head north out of New Jersey and visit Montreal. Then west to hook-up with DH and Ranger Tim on the shore of Lake Superior. Maybe we could have little watercress sandwiches cut in triangular shapes - white bread with the crusts trimmed. And a thermos of garbanzo beans. Who remembers Judy Henske? Anyway, this will be fun. A picnic on the lake with mooses and bears perhaps. Certainly bunnies. Maybe I can get a few pictures and freshen up the interview material. I mean, what I already have is timeless, but it lacks a certain currency, if ya know what I mean. I mean, I've maybe procrastinated as long as one can without calling it something else... like avocational abandonment or something. I feel like Steve Himmer, although he is at least writing something while he procrastinates on the book.

Dervala.... coming soon

But first a word from our sponsor:

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Isabelle Adjani

Here's a Michele Manceaux interview with Isabelle Adjani a decade ago when she had just turned thirty-nine and knew most everything. Perhaps this will keep you busy while I finish editing the Dervala piece...

Extract:

Michèle MANCEAUX : One felt up to now that the world perplexed you. It seems that you have acquired an understanding that you did not have before.

Isabelle ADJANI : It's true. Life has brought me work to do on myself these past two years. Deep, internal work...

Work that you have done alone, or with help?

There has already been the karmic work : that what life has transformed in me, this initiation brought on, of necessity, by trials. It's a road one goes by oneself, but always accompanied. By visible helpers and more invisible guides.

Books? Therapists?

Yes, but "therapists" means not only "psychotherapists". There are also beings that primarily take care of the soul. I have directed myself to those. I believe in angels, so it's simple. I think that we all carry the divine within us.

Any day now...

An interview with the dazzling Ms. Dervala Hanley!

Coming Soon

A new Sandhill Interview...

Sibel Edmonds

Thanks to David Isenberg for the link to this interview with Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso.

Whatever Happened to Brian Moffatt?

Whatever Happened to BMO Easy?

Last year one of the more barbaric yawpers ... gotta thank the Dean campaign for bringing Whitman home there ... someone we counted on to "Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs" was Brian Moffatt. (That's my free American jazz movement allusion for today. If anyone asks you where "kick out the jams" comes from, you now have the Whitman reference).

Brian quit blogging in December. Shadows of his blog remain in Google cache.

A few days ago I was whining about lack of access to the gated community that is Orkut and all three of the people I pestered for an invitation were willing to let me in, but then the thing went down and I had to wait. I think I might owe Turner US$9.95 since I asked him for an invitation before I found out there were people willing to do it for free.

When they finally lifted the red velvet rope and the doorman discovered that indeed, my name was on the list and there was no reason for me to wait outside scuffling in the pigeon poop any longer, one of the first things I did was comb through my address book to be sure there would be people like me inside. I inquired of Brian and since I had him on the line so to speak, I asked him what happened to his blog. His response was of course worth sharing, because he's a flaming genius. Here it is:

Hey Frank,

Truth be told, I only pulled the blog because my family demanded it! I have to admit I was getting a little carried away with it. My children need some attention. Which, again, truth be told, they've now been getting. To my everlasting benefit and joy.

As well, I could see that I was 'wanting' to write something a little more satiric. The last three posts I wrote were complete fabrications - valid as far as I was concerned - but I felt something of the charlatan, especially regarding the comments people were leaving. I had no intention of embarrassing anyone, but felt I had.

Plus Mike Golby wrote to say that my comments box wasn't working properly.

Plus my web host and domain name were both up for renewal and I couldn't justify the expense. Especially around Christmas.

Plus I was thinking that I might try my hand at finishing off a novel I'd abandoned a few years ago. (Why I persist in that delusion - a novel about delusion - I know not. In fact there might be a novel in that. A novel about a deluded wannabe novelist persisting in writing a novel about delusion -
reminds me of the Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo, the protagonist going on incessantly about his last cigarette)

Plus the house...

The Parts That Were Left

The Parts That Were Left Out of the Weinberger Interview...

In the first posted draft, I had the endorsements and affirmations below larded throughout the text. David found this a less than pleasiing presentation so I've moved them here, a more discrete location. I'll have to admit that the boxed testimonial thing looked a lot like advertising in the weekly shopper throwaway that piles up around my mailbox.

Regardless, a lot of nice people had a lot of nice things to say about David. Here are some of them.

David Weinberger speaks wisely, wittily, humbly, truly on behalf of human interests in technological matters. We should treasure his appreciative and cautious enthusiasm for technological development; only rarely can a regular people find such a combination of a philosophical mind, a generous spirit, a winning prose style, and a determined advocate. - AKMA

"Keenly observant but always approachable, David's quiet but far-reaching insights into our interaction with our technologies and the world evince a mix of critical acuity and a profound, self-effacing humanity. The upside to everything going down, his gentle humor, love of people, and formidable intellect lend the Web its most valuable attributes: credibility, respectability, and dignity." - Mike Golby

"Learned, passionate, decent, kind, clever, funny and positive adjective inspiring." - Gary Turner.

Dr. Weinberger is a helluva writer and a mensch of the first rank. He's also funny as hell and a great friend. What less can I say? - Doc Searls

David is sneakily genius. You have a conversation with him, and it seems like you're on equal footing. And then he goes off and writes something like Small Pieces...amazing and poetic. - Evan Williams

"David is wicked smart, as he likes to say of others. And very funny. And a highly compassionate human being. He has also yelled at me so loud I had to hold the telephone away from my ear. Twice he did this. But then, I've never had very good luck with best friends." - Chris Locke

David is able to diffuse the most volatile situations. He's made me laugh when I was about to scream. Even when he's being high maintenance, I don't mind, because he goes about it in a most affable manner.

He's casually brilliant, which is a rare and lovely quality. - Wendy Koslow

I enjoy David's embracing of the blog in a context of social systems as well as his trying to explain why the Internet exists etc. I've been surprised when doing a search on something I want to comment on only to find David's been there ahead of me on his blog. Or blogs. - Bob Frankston

One of the reasons I got into blogging was David's inspiring vision that we were creating something new here and that we were going to have to be a certain way if we wanted it to be a certain way. - Euan Semple

He seems like a man who goes out of his way to be fair. He may not agree with you, but he seems willing to at least listen with an open mind, first, before making a judgment. And unlike so many of the other A-Listers, he acknowledges that you've made a statement -- that's a rare trait, and one that should be valued.

And he uses a lot of orange at his site. I like a man who uses orange. - Shelley Powers

David Weinberger is such a painfully excellent writer that I cringe at my own inability to adequately describe how excellent he is. Better yet, he's a wonderful thinker--and that rarest of A-list weblog writers: kind, and a gentleman. I've not witnessed a single Alpha male excess. How could you not love that? - Donna Wentworth

David is, in a word, a wonder. He represents a wholly unique blend of brilliance, compassion, wit, clarity, verbal mastery (in writing and in person)--and not an ounce of bullshit. It’s an honor and a pleasure to know him. - Denise Howell

David Weinberger manages, in ways that defy simple analysis, to be generously incisive, passionately provocative, thoughtfully hilarious and charmingly disarming. While for others self-deprecation can be a masked form of aggression, in David's hands it becomes a graceful instrument of wit and wide-ranging comment. He should be read at least twice - once for the pared-down elegance of his argument, and again to glimpse the labor that made such seeming simplicity possible. - Tom Matrullo

What I would like to say about David W is that he is a fine intellect who goes out of his way to "keep the faith," to stay with a conversation, even when he has reason to feel ill-used, and to persist until reason and good humor prevail. - Phil Cubeta