A brave old world

September 19, 2007 in Big Ideas

Dear Thinkers,

And now, I enter the world of BLOGS.

Please understand if I sputter here. I never thought I would cross this threshhold, and now that I am here, my stomach is unsettled, my knees shaking.

To begin with, I don’t like the word. BLOG sounds like a genetic mutation. (cross a frog with a blue fish and this is what you get.) It sounds like something that happens accidentally, something you don’t have to think about or check out, something you can throw up against a wall and defy the reader not to get some meaning out of it. You can be smug about your blog. “Well, it’s how I feel, and feelings can’t be wrong.”

Most importantly, perhaps, a journalist can infer that she doesn’t have to get it all into the coverage, because, after all, you can always use the loose ends — the bits that didn’t find their way into your coverage — and make a small blog bouquet out of them. Blogs can give a reporter a false sense of security, because a reporter should always thrive to get most everything into the coverage, impressions too.

All that said, there is no question that sharing ideas in a forum like this can only help us as we journey on. Questions about what to do, how to do it, why we’re doing it, etc… are flying at us from so many different directions — from what we read and of course our own work. This can be a space where we can push back a bit from the sweat of our daily work and think out our actions and our visions.

That said, this is not a place to rant, to spiel, to fall in love with received wisdom. This is a place where we should offer ideas and the benefit of new wisdom that comes from our experiences. Critically, we should back up our assertions. Critically, we should challenge one another to look at our work from new and even innovative perspectives.

There is more to be said about this space. For now, welcome. And please be gentle with your somewhat intrepid professor.