It occurred to me that sometimes I'm looking for information about certain topics or ideas, say commuting by bike, freecycling, or crummy church signs, but lately, I'm finding that I'm starting to follow people rather than merely ideas. I've started following Mike Wesch and Will Richardson on-line. They have certain areas of interest, to be sure, but there's a trust there, I think. I've seen their other work, and I have an idea of what to expect from them, and I trust that their ideas will continue to make me think, so even though I'm interested in the ways Web 2.0 is changing the ways we learn and think and interact, I am also interested in the slant that these two guys have on that phenomenon.
So I wonder... will Web 2.0 lead us to follow people more than ideas? What does this mean for the way we blog and construct our ethos on-line and/or the ways we read/evaluate blogs (and ethos)?
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“I heard someone say once that forgiveness is having given up all hope of
having had a better past.”–Anne Lamott Rainy days always make me feel
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16 years ago
2 comments:
I'm not sure I see the distinction, at least, they way you've framed it for yourself. It was the ideas that led you to follow these bloggers, and it's the ideas that occur to you (the things that "make you think") that keep your interest. It's the idea of a person that we follow, even when we think we are following a person. We can't help but impose, on some level, our own ideas of who or what a person is, and, particularly (in my opinion) when we're removed by several levels from the person--through the internet, or performance, or station (political, job, etc.)--it's just as easy for the person to broadcast a persona, that may or may not be true to their private identity.
i think "persona" is probably a more precise way to say what I was thinking... even so, there is something about that "persona" (and I think it's more than the logos, although I agree with you that ideas are a huge part of the draw) that keeps me coming back to the blog. And I find myself gathering RSS feeds more for specific blogs or sites than broad sweeping concepts (or more specific ones). There are ideas that attract my attention, but within those ideas, I'm choosing my own teachers and authorities, and others are doing this more and more too (blogrolls are perhaps one example). I'm not sure where I'm going with this exactly... just sort of thinking "out loud"...
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