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Friday, May 28, 2004

What this blog is and what it is not ... - part 2

The idea that a blog is a diary has the advantage that it is an electronic and public diary, but I personally do not see my blog as much as a diary. It can be a diary in terms. I can not conceive that I use my blog the same way I would use a personal diary, made in paper, that colored little agenda that comes with a sheet for each day, and at the end of the night when we're already in bed, ready to sleep, pick it up from a drawer of a nightstand and philosophically noted our emotions during the day, our not solved problems, our secret dreams, our little crimes that we do not have the courage to tell anyone alive, but we think are worthy of being noted for any future use. I think writing a diary is a boredom.

To be honest, I'd written already a diary during a certain period of my life. It was a very strange experience, but I'll let to the next opportunity the story of my 1992 old diary.

In short, it was dull to write every day, while reading it today, I see its as something valuable and that worth the effort of having been written. But I never would put it in public on the Internet. Maybe after some years of the facts, or with some lines and phrases censored, but then it would lose much of its originality and spontaneity.

But it does not mean that this blog can not be another kind of diary. It can.

Who knows, I can use my blog not to record the details of my day-to-day, or my innermost feelings, but I can use to record my rational thoughts, the flow of my ideas. It can be my diary that report my relationship with the outside world. I can register my perception of what happens in the world, on TV, at work. But in this case, it would be as closer to a daily newspaper as a diary. But has not that same newspaper which is considered a diary? In fact, they are very similar. But I will not write a newspaper. It seems to me that the Internet is already too full of this kind of subject. Unless I'm somebody incredibly important, an authority on something of interest to the general public, as is the case of famous from politics, from journalism, from media, like Allan Greenspan, David Letterman, among many others. I do not think I would have something to contribute in this matter.

The second idea, that the blog can be a personal homepage, seems partly true, but it is not. Sure, a blog and a homepage have something in common, namely both are in HTML format, can be accessed through a browser, are public, can be updated, enhanced, edited, etc., but I think a personal page contains more freedom of production, more organization in terms of technologic resources, and does not have the urge to be constantly updated as a blog. I mean, one not uptadet blog has no harm for it, but it does not arouse any interest to the public, only for the owner. Without being updated, the blog is like an old newspaper that we usually see on the counters in butcher shops, but we can not wrap meat in it. Already a homepage can contain most enduring subject. It is more like a book to a newspaper. Of course, depending on their content, a blog can be more durable in terms of interest, and a page could be more futile and disposable. Then both would be more like those monthly or weekly magazines than daily newspapers or eternal books. But this is not a magazine or a newspaper that I have in mind when I'm writing a blog. At least for now, no.


The third idea is that the blog is a forum, but I think that the blog as a forum loses much agility to competition. There are sites where we can create our own forum, which sorts by area of interest and is visited by people who share common interests. The fact that an owner who can have some control over what is published in a blog turns it in a more organized tool than a forum, where everyone usually normally have enough freedom to publish whatever he wants, including things that have no relations with the theme of the forum. These are the famous off-topic. By have an owner, the blog looks more like a guest book that accompanies a work of art that is exposed to the public and serves as a presence list book, with the advantage of it not merely receive a signature and a date. But remains the idea that the public must have no more prominence than the owner. The owner's text is the art. Who wants to receive more attention than the owner must to create your own blog and go to make your show there. In this case, the blog is a kind of showcase for the owner's texts.

Partly yes, everyone likes to show off a little, and I am no exception to the rule, but this is not the main intention to start my blog. I see it more as a forum than a showcase. And I like the idea of having control of what the public adds to it because, face it, we can not discriminate based reviews and critical to our ideas and texts, but do not want people criticizing us in our own home, or be warned in public that a word is not written with x, but with two s. I like the idea of a blog as a forum. The fourth idea is that it, our dear blog, can be a book that will make over time. An e-book written almost live, with nearly simultaneous electronic applauses as well, via comments.

This is not exactly my plan. Who has written a book, any monograph or any other written work that requires time and lots of pages and any organization knows that the Microsoft Word working offline is much more appropriate, and that writing something unfinished and subject it to criticism before maturing this text is, in my view, a kind of masochist and dull. If you want applause, better is to publish something really carved and polished, not something primitive and unfinished. Not that anyone would not want to do a book in this manner. It's just a matter of personal taste, and besides, I do not want to write a book. I have written one, and I know how it is. But the story of this book is also for later.

The fifth idea, that the blog might be an online archive of texts and notes, in order to preserve data for the distant future is not a bad idea, but a file no need be public and receives comments. If the intention is to preserve, to keep, he can type notes in Word and print it, put in an envelope and send it to a mailbox, or store in a safebox, in other words, you can save his writings and ideas anywhere you want, as a time capsule. But it's still an interesting idea to see a blog as a time capsule.

So, that profile will have my blog?

It will be in part as a diary of my new ideas, in part as a draft to test ideas for my future personal page, which I promise that I will make the way I always dreamed, in part as a forum to discuss my ideas with people who I think have something to contribute and discuss, and in part as a book, in which I write provisory texts for a truth book in the future, and finally as a time capsule, where I keep my ideas for posterity in form of bits. I know it has a strong tendency to want to be much less than this, but I also know that it can become something much more interesting than anything I have mentioned. It depends of me. For now it is suffice. I'm glad I have written so much!

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