Crooked Timber

“Crooked Timber is a cabal of philosophers, politicians manque, would-be journalists, sociologues, financial gurus, dilletantes and flaneurs who have assembled to bring you the benefit of their practical and theoretical wisdom on matters historical, literary, political, philosophical, economic, sociological, cultural, sporting, artistic, cinematic, musical, operatic, comedic, tragic, poetic, televisual &c &c, all from perspectives somewhere between Guy Debord, Henry George and Dr Stephen Maturin. We hope you?ll enjoy the show.” —Crooked Timber

In the past few months I have noticed more group blogs. ProBlogs and GrandTextAuto come to mind. KairosNews is also morphing into something similar.

I have noticed that when two students join to work on a project, they do far more work than one. But I actively discourage groups of three, because I rarely see the cumulative efforts of three students rising above what the two-student groups offer. Will a reverse tragedy of the commons effect kick in? One hopes that, instead, the group bloggers will gain energy from each other. But is a blog supposed to be a “show”? Doesn’t that create a distance between author and reader — the kind of distance that hypertext is supposed to reduce? I like the “carnival” metaphor better.