The mighty-meta tug-o-war on techrhet last week whipped up quite a
storm.  It’s lain quiet again, for now, pending reloads and recalculations
I suppose.  I didn’t jump in because I was busy in N.M.; it was all I could
do to keep up with reading the threads, and as much as it stimulated in my own
thinking about why blogs enable something different than I’ve seen
before, I kept cool, not knowing the antagonizers and button-pushers from the
from the trumpsters or the trumpeters from the analogs or the analogues from the
bots–no disrespect intended.  Single-channel lists: wash cycle hot bleach
and mixed colors swirling. 

I started blogging because the lists often fall dead silent or explode in a
frenzy of over-action cum clog.  It’s not an either-or dilemma between
lists and blogs, of course, and I still lurk on a few lists in an attempt to
keep up with what all the brilliant, well-established folks, the makers of list
culture have to say.  A blog, however, is a different kind of home. 
Plus, I wanted to give it a try, write more often–whatever I wanted, in a space
where I could tap into what others were saying and where they could tap into
what I was saying.  Tap!

I sipped a few beers last night–going away beers–with a blogger and two
non-blogging academic folks.  Four of us.  We talked a lot about the
futures of blogs as legitimate scholarship, tech-enabled publishing
alternatives, the connections enabled in spite of distance and time and (even
more monumental) disciplinary partitions.  Although I won’t go to
great lengths to parade statistically-based or empirically sound proofs of the value
(rounded to the nearest decibels) of blogs in composition, I will give a
nod to these inferences (as in, take what you will):

• Let’s not forget the importance of interchanges between bloggers and blog
  skeptics (Pyrrhonist bloggers; I think, but don’t blog)–folks who dismiss
  it as a waste of time, a distraction, a plight of infoglut, an unruly diary,
  and so on.  Among doubters are technophobes, neo-Luddites, old guards
  and other well-intentioned folks who might give blogging a try with just the
  right nudge.
• Proving a medium takes time.  Assessment models haven’t kept up with
  front-edge media, hybrid pedagogies, experimentation, error.  Oh, and
  proving the medium deadens it, renders it hegemonic, pledges it to the
  regulative rain-cloud.  All rubrics can go to hail.  Well of
  course this is free-float and naive.  But assessment regimens condition
  us to systematized drone.  The models fall flat.  The coursework
  is a bore.  Disengagement begets cheating, and cheating inspires
  outcry.  I’m not ready to say assessment is the enemy, but just
  frontload a call for writing with a four-column rubric and see what kind of
  tamped out stuff unfolds.  Ore into molds, mechanically poured.
• Blogs chip away at segregations between journalists and academics, between
  the public sphere and the academy, between old and young, between Michigan
  City, Indiana and Fulton, New York, between 1:00 p.m. and 1:45 a.m., between
  you and me.  We’re apart, no we’re together.  Apart.  But
  here. And there. Yes, and blogging does that.  I suppose MUD’s
  and MOO’s do that, too.  Or wiki’s.  Or house parties. Or flagship
  conferences.  But blogging doesn’t require us to share a project as
  much as to share a curiosity; it doesn’t need us to gather, but it enables
  us to disperse, to distribute, to connect, and to recoil.  Invitations
  to all.

Well, I tried.  That’s all I have to say about weblogs for now.  I
was noticing–disturbing as it is–that my "On Weblogs, On" category
was crusting and falling behind the other categories.  So I needed to carry
on about blogs. 

My infrequent posting are explained by a new pile of work at work. 
Since my official letter of resignation didn’t get circulated far and wide, it’s
taken word of mouth to spread the news that I’m leaving the U. in less than a
month.  With that, I’m in on a whole docket of meetings–including another
pair of search committees tomorrow.  Mission:  replace myself. 
Tackboard: Sell the house that hasn’t sold, scrap through online stuff, scratch
that itch to see F 9/11
[link via IA]
this weekend, plunk out notes on Glenn’s Aspasia, mow
the front grass.  Well, yeah, and see which forum gets full fastest.