textual genre [spammed to hell]
—textual genre [spammed to hell] To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke… “
The Labyrinth Unbound: Weblogs as Literature
Calling a weblog ?literary? does not require content that is about literature or even content that aims to be literature. It is not an attempt at categorizing one weblog and its author as more worthwhile in a canonical sense than any other. To the contrary, I propose that every weblog can be considered literary in…
Way Back When
One of the really good web resources for internet researchers is the wayback machine maintained by the Internet Archive. I have to admit I am not good at using it, but I really should. This was pointed out by David Brake, PhD researcher in London: You suggest in Personal Publication and Public Attention that “the…
Personal Publication and Public Attention
So, is the academic attention to blogs the same as “selling out,” the way punk-rockers sold out when they received public acclamation rather than evoke the sensation of disgust? The attention given to weblogs in the media, elevating blogs to journalism or at least commentary, is one way of colonizing the field. If blogging can…
Blogging As Typing, Not Journalism
After repeating some of Wonkette‘snumbers, Sullivan mused, “A Kerry landslide? Could be. Could be.” He cautioned the numbers could be misleading, even as he was publicizing them. This is the kind of stuff we used to run in my aforementioned school paper, when the speculation surrounded who was going steady. The difference is that the…
Reflections on an Emerging Academic Weblog Community
Reflections on an Emerging Academic Weblog Community (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) The Seton Hill blogging community has a small number of dedicated bloggers who generate the vast majority of the activity (at one point I estimated that 5% of our bloggers generate 50% of the activity, though that number changes based on how close we are to…
An Introduction to the Imagined Community of Instant Publishing
At the core of the blogosphere lies a minority of active and engaged bloggers who post, comment, and link frequently, creating a kernel of conversational community based on personal networks facilitated by blogging tools and associated technologies. However, for the vast majority of users who blog casually, infrequently, and for the benefit of their real-world…
Blogs Blamed for Exit Poll Fiasco
News organizations promised Wednesday to look into why their Election Day exit polls showed an initial surge for John Kerry, but also blamed bloggers for spreading news that gave a misleading view of the presidential race. —Blogs Blamed for Exit Poll Fiasco (Wired | AP) The headline is a bit incendiary, but the article makes…
Online Syllabus Not "Official" Enough?
Online Syllabus Not “Official” Enough? (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I just got an e-mail from an administrative assistant who wanted a copy of the syllabus for one of my current courses. I sent her the URL of the “syllabus” page of the course website, as well as links to the “outline” and “projects” pages. She responded that…
Give me truth-telling over more transparency
The flourishing community of Web-based blogmeisters – some of them skilled journalists, many of them fervent partisans – is transforming the climate in which ideas are floated and tested…. One recurring theme in Internet comment targets the unwillingness of journalists in mainstream media (known as MSM, generally a pejorative) to admit to having opinions of…
Evil, Evil, Evil
Evil, Evil, Evil (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) For the past few days, this blog has been getting comment-spammed one or two times per hour, and my network of student blogs is getting hit with spams that contain URLs with increasingly crude language. I’ve spent over an hour today, and between the two different sites (and two different…
Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail
This summer, sitting in the Tank and reading campaign blogs, you could sometimes get a half-giddy, half-sickening feeling that something was shifting, that the news agenda was beginning to be set by this largely unpaid, T-shirt-clad army of bloggers. A few blocks down Eighth Avenue, thousands of journalists with salaries and health benefits waited for…
Heft vs. Googlehole: Scholarship and the Print Pit
Heft vs. Googlehole: Scholarship and the Print Pit (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I love the heft and feel of a book. So do academic tenure and promotion committees, I am told. In “The Book as the Gold Standard for Tenure and Promotion in the Humanistic Disciplines,” Estabrook notes that only in history departments do a majority of…
My Alternate Life
My Alternate Life (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) My colleague Lee McClain recently published My Alternate Life, a young adult book that features an amazing computer game that lets adopted children live the life they lost when their birth mothers gave them up for adoption. If you pass by my office door this time of year, you might…
Afterlife by blogging
Blogger, and several of the other blog-systems, have a feature that lets you blog in the future. I can set the date on the post for a date in the future, and then it will be posted when I am dead. This is a classic set-up for the: “There is a letter with my lawyer,…
Interactive Fiction – An Overview
One complaint that hardcore IF fans have about such derivations from the old school plain text game is that developers often get so caught up in designing the graphics and recording the sound effects that the story line, the most important part of a true interactive fiction game, gets lost in the shuffle. The difference…
blogs.setonhill.edu down
blogs.setonhill.edu down Whoops… it looks like blogs.setonhill.edu is down. I’ve sent a note to the system administrator, but I’ve got to go offline for the evening now. Let’s keep our fingers crossed… Update: Blogs are back up. Similar:Paper too short? Here are actual tips for serious students, not dumb tricks your prof will…Is your academic…
Triumph of the bloggers?
Internet bloggers have drawn blood and American journalism may never be the same…. Orville Schell, dean of the School of Journalism at the University of California in Berkeley, said CBS’s admission of error after days of stalling was “a landmark moment for the balance between the blogosphere and mainstream media.” —Triumph of the bloggers? (CNN/Reuters) The…
^ [Kirschenbaum's Blogrolling Outage Lament]
Blogrolling‘sgone dark and the blogrolls lie limp, no shuffle and bustle as busy blogs hustle their way to the head of the queue. Gone too are the diacriticals, small, precious marks of individualization, the QWERTY electron bursts that celebrate fresh activity, new life?our SETI receivers. Brackets and parentheses, asterisks and exclamations, plusses and minuses and…
ubiquity?
I could have sketched the layout of her blog for her with fair accuracy, but I?ve never before spoken her name. —Jill Walker —ubiquity? (jill/txt) An interesting epiphany describing the impersonal intimacy one can experience in the blogosphere. Similar:Two Trains Running ( #AugustWilson #CenturyCycle, 7 of 10)August Wilson’s Century Cycle > Spoi…BooksThe Irreversible Damage of Mark…