Friday, December 12, 2003
BBC - Radio 4 - Woman's Hour - Victorian Scrapbooks
Interesting discussion on Victorian commonplace books. There is a current, modern equivalent - and you're reading it - the blog. A blog is a web log, a published record of the thoughts, ideas and issues relevant to an individual. Blogs tend to be updated with varying frequencies, with active ones being done once or more a day.
Commonplace books are a way of recording personally relevant information, probably not categorised except by date encountered, and where first-hand information and comment on other stuff is better than comment on comment on comment on news - much like a blog. Commonplace books refer to information in the real world, whereas blogs often refer to other web sites, adding comment and views. Similar issues around first-hand and second-hand knowledge apply - to blog from another site directly is great - to point to another blog that in turn talks about a different topic is less good, and so on. Some blogs have guest authors, whilst others are highly personal. Being on the web, they are published - sort of. They are at least accessible, but in the mass of internet information they are effectively lost and private, unless one is specifically looking.
Further work builds on blogs to track the spread of ideas through the internet community, and to determine the topics that people are actually taking about. There is a natural bias towards technology, but it's not the case that only techies write blogs.
Amazing how old ideas are re-invented, rediscovered, and reappear in new forms, isn't it?!
Interesting discussion on Victorian commonplace books. There is a current, modern equivalent - and you're reading it - the blog. A blog is a web log, a published record of the thoughts, ideas and issues relevant to an individual. Blogs tend to be updated with varying frequencies, with active ones being done once or more a day.
Commonplace books are a way of recording personally relevant information, probably not categorised except by date encountered, and where first-hand information and comment on other stuff is better than comment on comment on comment on news - much like a blog. Commonplace books refer to information in the real world, whereas blogs often refer to other web sites, adding comment and views. Similar issues around first-hand and second-hand knowledge apply - to blog from another site directly is great - to point to another blog that in turn talks about a different topic is less good, and so on. Some blogs have guest authors, whilst others are highly personal. Being on the web, they are published - sort of. They are at least accessible, but in the mass of internet information they are effectively lost and private, unless one is specifically looking.
Further work builds on blogs to track the spread of ideas through the internet community, and to determine the topics that people are actually taking about. There is a natural bias towards technology, but it's not the case that only techies write blogs.
Amazing how old ideas are re-invented, rediscovered, and reappear in new forms, isn't it?!
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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