a. fish

Can you still blog to find out what you're thinking?

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

- Joan Didion

The five finalists for The National Book Award were on Charlie Rose the other night, one of them mentioned the Joan Didion quote when Rose asked them day-in-the-life, what's it like to be a Book Award author questions.

Joan Didion writes to find out what she's thinking. This year I went to BloggerCon to find out why I'm blogging. I started blogging to decant and organize thoughts, and make room for more thinking. If people leave comments once in a blue moon, you can blog to find out is anybody thinking what I'm thinking blogging? Before the election, many blogged not to detect thought, but to push it. They were not explicit of course ("you must start thinking what I'm blogging!")

2004 is the year that blogs became a little more formal. More blogs have a specific purpose, are more polished, have commercial-ish mission statements. More people read blogs, and google for yours. The non-A-list blogger once had the freedom of I-can-write-what-I'm-thinking sandbox like attitude, "I'll never meet the few people who read me". Like it or not b-list and c-list bloggers, somebody will read your blog as your resume. How do we adjust the sandbox attitude for 2005? Where can you safely blog just to find out what you're thinking?

BloggerCon III Journalism Dinner

Here is the list of journalism diners from last month's BloggerCon. Thanks to Tim Bishop for reminding me to type up the list (and giving us a lift home :D ).

Tim Bishop Chaddus Bruce Gabe Rivera John Adams Matthew Sheffield

Joseph Palmer Robert Cox Staci D. Kramer Eli Draluk Marsha Robertson

Gerd Stodiek Steve Rhodes Jim Zellmer Jay Rosen

Update: Steve reminded me that the audio of all bloggercon sessions at ITConversations.

Source Code Lit

This is interesting. At the BloggerCon dinner last week I chose the Journalism group, partly because Steve, who I carpooled with was in that group. I think I was the only one who was not a journalist in any way - all had "broken" stories whether in the Christian Science Monitor or on their own blog.

Someone asked me (I will edit this and fill in his name when I find it)  anger is what compelled a lot of them to write, what compelled me to write? Anger....no not anger. Ffffrusstration? Maybe? Or....desperation? Desperate to understand something? Get a basic background on some current event story (like Arafat), or working out a programming problem or wawa wawa wa wa. I drifted off in a trail of incohesive word soup.

So today I see: "I sometimes think that a poet is really a frustrated engineer. Or is it, an engineer is a frustrated poet?" Huh.

Update: this may explain the fascination with linguistics and the latest source of progressive hope, the Frank Luntz of the left, George Lakoff [via Rebecca Blood]. (I wonder if Phil's working with the Rockridge Institute yet). More about Lakoff below, which should really be a separate post.

Nuance of Blogs and Cons

Oh, right I know who you are - you're one of the people I troll: Ed Cone met his troll at BloggerCon III.

Moments in blogosphere history: overheard at some point Saturday: "the NBA just fined Mark Cuban for what he said in his blog". I wonder if Dave Winer or Lawrence Lessig will have something to say about this.

You're not supposed to be human -- you're a blog! You know how someone of moderate celebrity from print or the blogosphere loses their mystique as soon as you stand next to them? It turns out PressThink is not a granite-human hybrid of authoritatative wisdom: he's actually just a person. Another surprise: his name is not "PressThink", in facetime he goes by Jay Rosen.