Criticism is generally self-criticism.
I think that there is a problem with Gauche, a blog written by Paul Anderson, a good friend of mine.
The material itself is high quality but, like me, its author was formed as a writer and a journalist before the internet took off.
Gauche lacks, I think, one of the features that a blog needs to be one in a full sense. It needs to be dialogical i.e. to have the form of a conversation in public between at least two people where others present can join in and take the floor. It takes two to blog, at least.
In saying this, I am situating blogging metaphorically and historically: Plato, Socrates, the Academy, the Forum, blogging.
The dialogical feature of blogging is built into the software, virtually at least, thanks primarily to Trackback and the way it can almost instantaneously alert others that you are having a conversation with them.
It doesn't look like TrackBack is enabled on Gauche, to judge by the feel of previous posts (Neither is Comment, which is a pity).
Paul is posting on the blog as if it were a print medium. You write something, it gets placed on a page, the publication is printed and distributed. Then, the next day or whenever, people read it. There is a long time gap between writer and reader and, with that, a distance between them. The print medium is not dialogical in the way that a blog is.
My blog is not a blog in a full sense either, even if it is addressed to someone, and has TrackBack enabled. Until a second person has spoken - blogged in response - there is, I think, no blog. So far mine is a monoblog, almost a contradiction in terms.
The post is addressed to you Paul. Until you reply, or someone else butts in, which is unlikely, this is a blog in gestation only.
I have already made a similar criticism of EU Commissioner Margot Wallström's blog.
I am also writing this to figure out how TrackBack works exactly.
Comments