In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Interconnectivity

Lauren

Hope some of you can expand, agree, or disagree with this thought:

As tools enable us to do more, the bar keeps getting raised higher and higher for how much you have to scan, how quickly you have to respond, and how much output you must generate in order to stay relevant.

This relates directly to some action research I’ve developing for a project of mine. Do you feel pressured to “stay relevant” as a blogger? Internet user? Regarding other technologies and gadgetry? Lay pundit? Any comments would be appreciated.

via George

15 thoughts on Interconnectivity

  1. well, i used to have a more bloggy type of site… and when i did i remember a vague pressure to somehow stay au courant on thangs… but more & more am i less & less convinced that the latest! newest! thing is either that important or even that relevant

    i mean, what the hell is up with people using “news” as a noun at all, y’know?

    generally, i find it an interesting exercise to not believe the hype (i.e., who the “best” “top” bloggers are – i mean, sure, i’ll check them out. but if it ain’t got that swing, what can i say? and sweet Boudica, who cares? do i read Time or Newsweek or USA Today? hell no. but they’re the top news organs – mmm, organs – of our time! and again i say, who cares? back in the 90s, when others were reading Time i was reading Cometbus & Slingshot & the like. i don’t feel like i missed out on much, ya dig?).

    anyhow, now it’s more of just a look! situation & i could care less (but i won’t) whether what i’m pointing at is new or not. it’s whether it has flavor, substance, quirk, style, et cet e ra…. all of course imho. but i’ll say i look for websites that do the same.

    from another angle, if i find a blog or site that is commenting on things in an up-to-the-minute way i generally find myself judging it by whether or not they seem to have a grasp of the history of their subject. if not, i’m off a-wandering again. bye bye. ain’t going to be sharing your bunk i’m afraid.

    did that make sense?

    by the by, what hell is “action research”?

  3. talk about interconnectivity, that response appaeared within minutes – you must be online at the same time i am!! we’re interconnected!!!!

    well, us & several million other folk… 😉

  4. When I was in college, lo these many years ago (the late 80s), Sharp word processors were the latests technology. Suddenly, you didn’t have to make pencil marks on the bottom of the page in order to know when to stop typing or know where to put the footnotes. I mean, it was a HUGE deal to even own a computer let alone use one; most people either had typewriters or word processors.

    15 years. As long as Terri Schiavo’s been brain-dead.

    Even by 1993, when I started law school and Microsoft had caught up, expectations were higher for formatting. So I’m really not surprised that there are higher expectations for research.

  5. Challenged to stay relevant as a blogger? I’d say yes. It’s changed a lot for me from when I started, in part because of getting unexpected recognition for blogging. Hell, I even got a job because of my blogging. That seems to have somehow raised the bar for me, at least until I remind myself that the reason anything happened is because I was just doing what I do. So if I keep doing it, I ought to be okay.

  6. This type of “progress” is the shit that brings societies down. (Plug: you might try A Brief History of Progress which yours truly recently reviewed. The last chapter is entitled “The Rebellion of the Tools.” Which, incidentally, sounds like some walkout I organized in high school.)

    Enough bloggatory masturabtion. To the point: If all you’re doing is reporting news, then yes, you should be going apeshit in order to stay on top of everything that’s happening. But we have Matt Drudge to blow a gasket about things like that for us. Instead, in my experience, the real deal behind blogging is doing the stuff higher up in Bloom’s Taxonomy — that is to say, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating.

    Successful blogs, as I’ve seen, start with an angle (the author’s), and then evolve into a discussion in the comment threads. It’s much more important, IMHO, to organize and eluclidate one’s position (which is why I do what I do), and then to facilitate further discussion, which, if it doesn’t lead to agreement, at least furthers mutual understanding.

    Until you’re getting paid, this should be a venture for you. Not for me, not for whoever else, but for you. Make it what you want it to be, and the people will come — which isn’t to say ignore what people say they want, but always take it with a grain of salt.

  7. Most definitely I feel pressure to stay “relevant,” despite my fairly low readership. It’s sort of what burnt me out on blogging a couple of months ago. There is a sort of double indemnity involved with blogging. You don’t want to just comment for the sake of commenting on a news item. Yet, there’s really little reason for people to visit your site at all if you don’t post regularly. There were days when I just didn’t have much to say, but I said something anyway, just to fill up the space.

    In the end, I think that breaks from it are quite good, but Billmon is right when he compares blogging to a drug. Eventually, something gets to you, and the most available outlet is your blog (if you already have one). After that, you’re back to the routine.

  8. “Do you feel pressured to “stay relevant” as a blogger? Internet user?”

    Do I feel pressured. Let’s see. Just before this post, you posted about 13 links that you, whom I find interesting, find interesting.

    I rarely even do this kind of blogging; just this kind of reading.

    And yes, I feel pressured . . . Not enough time, and too many good thinkers and writers. I can’t possibly keep up.

  9. I think the amount of pressure one feels is directly related to the type of blog he keeps, as Chuck mentioned. By the time I’ve heard about something or have managed to calm down enough to make sense, dozens of others have written and analyzed the situation to infinity, so I don’t try to keep up.

    In my last job I was on pretty much every list-serv imaginable that had anything to do with children’s health and well-being. I spent my days scouring printed materials and web sites looking for information that I could pass along to the org’s membership. It was quite a task and I never felt like I was on top of things. There always seemed to be some study I’d missed or a conference I hadn’t heard about or a publication I hadn’t heard about.

    In the new job, I no longer have to pass along all that information, but I do still try to stay up on at least the major issues; it’s proving to be quite daunting. I can’t imagine trying to do the same thing with issues that revolve around the blogging community or tools and gadgetry. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

  10. I suspect we are still in the very early stages of what blogging will turn into. Although it already seems like there are too many blogs, it’s still a tiny phenomenon on the wider stage with huge potential for growth. If someone is either trying to blog as a public service, or just wants to become really popular, they must be feeling a lot of pressure as the competition grows in breadth and depth. The point has long since past when I can have any hope of keeping track of all the blogs that I actually enjoy, much less all the stuff on the internet. And as a blogger, there are plenty of things I don’t even bother saying because I know someone else will say them better.

  11. Remember when computers were supposed to result in more leisure time? They’ve actually accelerated our lives. there’s some good work in the history of technology on “autonomous technology”, or technology that appears to defy human attempts to control it.

  12. There’s as much pressure to stay relevant and to write pithy stuff as I put on myself.

    Last week I was on vacation from my real life job. I found myself wanting to promote my blog and move it up the ecosystem that shall not be named. I busted my ass leaving comments and writing emails and attempting to write good stuff.

    By the end of the week I was ready to throw my computer into the street and back over it with a steamroller.

    After talking with my blog partner, we decided it wasn’t worth it. Both of us have IRL jobs. Both of us have kids. Both of us want lives away from pixeling.

    So I guess if the blog tanks, it tanks. But it’s only worth doing if we derive pleasure from it.

  13. I don’t feel much pressure to be “relevant.” But then, my blog is mostly about me and ideas that cross my mind, not trying to educate others.

    Where I do feel pressured by technology is the refusal of so many software (and hardware) designers to back-design their products. Apple’s pretty good about this — I can still open and use files and programs from the late 1980s, even if they were designed for much smaller b&W screens and slow processors — but so many others are not. This really sucks when you’re happy with a given program, and not the newer ones, and none of them play well with each other when it comes to shared space.

  14. I see myself as the tortoise, though not the tortoise of tortoise and hare fame. Just a tortoise. I think if something is good it will eventually place itself in the consciousness, or I could argue anything in the public consciousness is mere populist rubbish and would be better avoided. I suppose there’s always an early-adopter crowd for any technology, if you think of videogames the early adopters buy the pS2 the day its out, possibly even the week before, but by the time the PS2 is mainstream, they dont want to know anymore – and to prove they are the most dedicated gamers in all Christendom they set about breaking records for Space Invaders.

    As my dad pointed out over the weekend, we are all pushing to work harder, to make more money to buy new stuff. As people make more and more money technology progresses faster and faster to keep giving us new excused to spend our money.
    The same truth is there in the internet and blogging. We must ask why so many people push everyone to blog, or do really only a few? It is to make money – 7million bloggers, thats a lot of web domains registered, a lot of web hosting deals, a lot of paid-for blog tools.

    Being an irrelevance, I predict now, will become increasing relevant in years to come.

  15. I oscillate between up-to-the-minute and long term. I may see a news item that I want to comment on immediately, and I usually have a post in progress and many more ideas incubating.

    Most of those incubating ideas never come to fruition. I tossed a bunch of newspaper clippings this morning and deleted a bunch of bookmarks. Some of them needed to be timely, and I just didn’t get to them in time. But I suspect that my ideas will show up later if they’re any good.

    At our last monthly meeting, my two blogging partners and I discussed the problem of getting too enmeshed in current events. I feel that I lose some freshness and descend into ranting if I stay too much in touch. I have to get away sometimes, physically and mentally.

    A walk is always good to clear the head, and I’m reading Charles Kingsley’s “Water Babies” right now. I’ll be done with it in a few days, and then on to who knows what.

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