Weblogs: May 2006 Archive Page

With their mouths largely shut but their laptops and flip phones open, teenagers' bedrooms are beginning to sound like the library.

So is the dinner table. On her show May 10, Ellen DeGeneres ribbed guest Lindsay Lohan: "Every time I've seen you, you're out with eight or nine girls, having dinner. You're all sitting around the table on your BlackBerries." Lohan matter-of-factly explained that she had "like 1,000" messages to answer.

Not long ago, prattling away on the phone was as much a teenage rite as hanging out at the mall. Flopped on the bed, you yakked into your pink or football-shaped receiver until your parents hollered at you to get off.

Now, Sidekicks and iBooks are as prized as Mom's Princess phone, and conversations, the oral kind, are as uncomfortable as braces. Which makes employers and communications experts anxious: This generation may be technologically savvier than their bosses, but will they be able to have a professional discussion? --Olivia Barker --Technology leaves teens speechless (USA Today)

Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary.

A California appeals court has smacked down Apple's legal assault on bloggers and their sources, finding that the company's efforts to subpoena e-mail received by the publishers of Apple Insider and PowerPage.org runs contrary to federal law, California's reporter's shield law, and the state Constitution.

Apple had also claimed that the inside information "could have been obtained only through a breach of an Apple confidentiality agreement." The company argued that even if the bloggers were journalists, there's no protection for anonymous sources who have committed the crime of trade secret theft. --Apple Loses Bid to Unmask Bloggers' Sources (Wired Blogs 27B Stroke 6)

This is good news for bloggers, since Apple's case hinged on the claim that bloggers aren't really journalists, and thus aren't entitled to the legal protections that enable journalists to carry out their jobs.

While duscussing This Blog Will Self Destruct, Will has wondered about professors who get special treatment that employees outside the academy don't get, while Eric has reported frustration that an employee who doesn't enjoy that kind of protection risks losing his or her job if the boss doesn't like what the employee posts in a lifestyle blog.

Here's another instance of a class of writers with special rights.

Apple can't just fire these bloggers, because in this case Apple was complaining about news that appeared on websites that cover Apple products. If this were a case of Apple employees writing about Apple, even if they were doing it on their own time, Apple would have been able to discipline them.

Back in the 1980's, when I attended high school, reading someone's diary would have been the ultimate intrusion. But communication was rudimentary back then. There were no cellphones, or answering machines; there was no ''texting,'' no MP3's or JPEG's, no digital cameras or file-sharing software; there was no World Wide Web -- none of the private-ish, public-ish, superimmediate forums kids today take for granted. If this new technology has provided a million ways to stay in touch, it has also acted as both an amplifier and a distortion device for human intimacy. The new forms of communication are madly contradictory: anonymous, but traceable; instantaneous, then saved forever (unless deleted in a snit). In such an unstable environment, it's no wonder that distinctions between healthy candor and ''too much information'' are in flux and that so many find themselves helplessly confessing, as if a generation were given a massive technological truth serum.

[..]

The general degree of anonymity varies: some bloggers post their full names, others give quirky, quasi-revelatory handles. No wonder everyone is up till 5 a.m. tweaking their font size and Photoshopping a new icon. At heart, an online journal is like a hyperflexible adolescent body -- but better, because in real life, it takes money and physical effort to add a piercing, or to switch from zip-jacketed mod to Abercrombie prepster. A LiveJournal or Blurty offers a creative outlet with a hundred moving parts. And unlike a real journal, with a blog, your friends are all around, invisible voyeurs -- at least until they chime in with a comment. --Emily Nussbaum --My So-Called Blog (New York Times)

Intersting how the author contrasts the online diary with "a real journal." I think she meant something like "unlike a paper diary." The digital versions are real.

This article, from 2004, comes just before the big MySpace/Facebook surge.

Within blogosphere studies, there is considerable disagreement as to whether the blogger's contruction of identity is a form of role-playing or an authentic attempt at mimesis. Some theorists have adopted apparently extreme positions: Raynes-Goldie, embracing postmodernism, suggests that "in this informational chaos, the question of truth is not really a useful one," whereas McNeill notes that "though these readers do not know the diarist outside of the context of her text, they believe her textual representation is 'real,' the flesh made digital" (37). Presenting a more measured view of the subject, Kitzmann writes, "that diaries and autobiographies, both handwritten and electronic, are grounded to a significant extent on real, authentic individuals is a common enough assertion." He compares the fictionalization of blog entries to a violation of Philippe Lejeune's "autobiographical pact" (59), the contract of trust formed between the reader and the writer, the autobiographical pact is based on the reader's recognition that the name of the author, narrator, and protagonist are the same, and that these three seem to share a common identity. --Daniel Holbrook --Theorizing the Diary Weblog (PDF) (Our Bold Hero)

I'm planning to beef up my knowledge of the personal diary weblog as part of my preparation for teaching Writing for the Internet, and Holbrook's paper (which he submitted for his MA thesis at the University of Chicago) covers the area nicely.

Hollbrook also has posted a useful bibliography, with some cross-reference metadata.

Illegal or inappropriate blogging or social behavior over the Internet is now a violation of District 128's student code of conduct at both Libertyville and Vernon Hills High Schools and can lead to denial of extracurricular student privileges. --Ed Collins

--Schools crack down on inappropriate blogs (Sun Times)

According to the article, the new school code uses this language: "Maintaining or being identified on a blog site which depicts illegal or inappropriate behavior will be considered a violation of this code."

Clarity is defeated once more by a passive verb!

If Billy puts up a blog in which describes himself doing illegal or inappropriate things, and he also posts a picture of Sally reading a book in the library and says, "Sally is a good girl who never misbehaves," then according to the wording quoted above, Sally is in violation of the code. She has been identified on a blog site which depicts illegal or inappropriate behavior.

I think it's safe to assume that's not what the authors of the code intended. Overall, though, because this code does not prohibit such blogging, but rather spells out the potential consequences, this code is probably a good way to prepare students for what to expect when they head into the workplace.

This confusing passive language might be part of a well-intended hint to encourage the students to post anonymously, while at the same time warning students that if they publicize their anonymous blog, someone is likely to make their true identity public.

Thanks for the link, Matt.

But even still I wrote about work inbetween pictures of me drinking, opiononated rants on creationism and conservation, I use the words cunt and twat and fuck. I joke about kicking babies and coat hanger abortions. I wax poetic about spring breaks past and Zombie movies.

Once I made it up to the meeting they had to change thier game plan. They had my entire blog printed out with pictures and highlighted passages. I was told as soon as I walked in that I was being terminated. The reason was the content of my blog. My blog had to be removed and my myspace account had to be deconstructed. I had untill noon the next day. I was still sobbing kind of quietly but I didn't want them to think that I was ashamed of what I had written. My parents read my blog. My old college friends keep up with my life through my blog. I took my badge off and looked at the mean HR lady who was smiling smuggly at me. She told me perhaps next time I would be more wise in my lifestyle and decision making choices regaurding work.

I was fired because of the way I represented myself on the internet. --Jessa Jeffries --This Blog will self destruct in less than twelve hours (Metafilter)

I looked briefly at Jeffries' blog before it went down, and quite frankly I can't say that I'm surprised.

It's not a First Amendment issue if an employer decides your blog makes you the kind of person they wouldn't want to hire. Jeffries called the kids for whom she presented "dummies," she linked to porn and myspace exhibitionists, used a church-sign generator to publish offensive messages, posted photos of herself and friends drinking, etc.

While none of these activities is illegal, and while the behind-the-scenes view of working at an animal museum is well written and entertaining, quite frankly I'm not at all surprised that her employers took this approach.

Threatening to sue her unless she deletes her entire blog -- including the entries that have nothing to do with her workplace -- strikes me as overkill.

Still, Jeffries showed very poor judgment.

It's an outlaw town, a ghetto of perfunctory design that assaults almost every one of our senses--if it had an odor, it would be that of a rotting corpse covered in Dollar Store cologne. It's a beast that has yet to be tamed, and has actually grown wilder as the years go by. And despite the best efforts of those who avoid it like the plague, MySpace is seeping into the online culture, have a greater influence as the days go by. --Mike Rubino --Crap Blog Junk Design Vomit: Some Thoughts on MySpace Design (Tranquility Lost)

One of my students subtly hints about his atttude towards MySpace.

Blogging Scholarship in a Nutshell (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Earlier today, I was working on three different proposals, all with deadlines today.

Amanda and Karissa stopped by to see how the proposals were doing. I noted that I was madly paring down the word count in order to make the proposals fit the online forms.

Amanda suggested the thesis, "Blogs good."

Karissa offered the antithesis, "Blogs bad."

I then supplied the synthesis: "Blogs OK."

It was a pleasant diversion in a hectic day.

All the proposals are in... and let cyberspace sing them sweetly to their rest.