the outering

Over the past few months, I've been outering myself for the first time. Sporadically at first, but I anticipate it will soon take off in frequency.

Yes, the blog may start to grow yet.

Of course that just makes me think "so many things to learn, so much to do."

I feel like I'm late to the show in a lot of ways, but then I remember that I'm the first of my group of friends to start a blog as far as I know. I was also the first of my group to get an email address. Not that that is particularly special, other than to show that if my crowd is any indication, blogging has not hit the mainstream quite yet.

And whether it has hit the mainstream or not may be important, if we assume that the more voices, the better for the world.

What I'm discovering is how blogs coalesce with each other, like drops of oil. They form links with each other, creating vast webs of knowledge and ideas, facts and feelings. Readers respond, lending inspiration and encouragement, or correction and criticism, creating new content by doing so. Blogging begets blogging.

The blogosphere represents a dramatic acceleration of media getting swallowed by new media.

What happens in the non-digital world: A person makes a statement to another, and the second person interprets the statement, restates it in their own terms, and deals with it how they choose, responding verbally (or not), and so on.

The blogosphere allows a discussion such as this to be performed with the entire world at once.

What the blogosphere could enable is creating a pattern of knowledge that reveals a perfectly (not to throw words around willy nilly or anything...) democratic version of the current state of affairs. If a global conversation occurred, what would the world say? And if democracy leads to the revelation of truth, what truths will the blogosphere reveal?

It is interesting that these thoughts come to mind today, as I was starting to lose interest in the blogging thing for the first time recently (probably due to recent events...). But the realization that another person actually read my blog made these ideas take shape. Before I got feedback from another person (other than my S.O.) I was starting to think that it was common for blogs to have no readers. Maybe it was even very common. Maybe all these blog things are actually just personal diaries written by nerds with inflated egos and too much time on their hands. Maybe after Atrios and Kos and Kaus and Milos and Chelios and Cherios (I'm just making this crap up now, I hope you realize...I hope General Mills doesn't sue me.) I don't even actually read Kaus, but I hear he's a "famous blogger".

As a side note, just before I wrote "famous blogger", I searched for information on famous bloggers. I now realize that bloggers who are "famous" now, if you can even say that with a straight face, will disappear so fast they won't know what hit them. As more and more people realize the value of blogs, people will no longer see blogging itself as the medium. Blogs will become something else, less geeky sounding. People won't refer to their blogs as that crazy technical thing they do with their free time, it will instead be a regular part of their professional and/or personal life. It will fade into ground, and eventually disappear.

As a further side note, I just realized how important it is to understand the tetrad. I didn't really understand it when Nui (my first e-reader, hi Nui!) said it: but McLuhan's tetrad really is a framework (my word?) for change. Media over time go through these phases. There's nothing to say at what rate and how long it takes for each stage to pass, but these are definite stages media go through. I can't believe I didn't understand that before.

(But now I do. Thanks Nui, for that.)

As I think about this, I get to thinking about blogging some more, what tools would be really useful etc., how I really want to have it designed, as opposed to my crappy blogger template (no offense to the designer, it's a good design, but obviously generic...fast obsolescence, these templates ;) ).

And I think about this idea of the fifth part of the tetrad is intriguing. Although I know nothing about it.


I remember, I remember Buffalo
It seems to me I remember every single f--king thing I know


It interesting that people talk about their "memory" as if it is a skill, or as a quantity of something they have in their brains. I think when people talk about their memory, they're often talking about their ability to remember useless facts. Because it is striking to me, the ease with which I think of some of McLuhan's statements when something I write or read or see relates to it. And it strikes me that this ease with which I can pull these thoughts is related to the amount of work it took to absorb its meaning. Ah, McLuhan you cool guy, you.

As a completely unrelated (until now!) story: This evening some of my friends recounted a couple of the inane happenings in my life that I told them about some time long ago as if they were interesting stories they immediately associated with me. I was surprised they remembered those stories, and I joked they were sweethearts for actually listening to me. For some reason that struck me as odd, and it is peculiar and perhaps serendipitous that it should relate to this topic.

I guess what I find interesting is related...who da thunk...



But back to my original thought:

It is interesting how inspired I am right now, largely because of the realization that it is not in fact unreasonable to think that every blogger out there can find a big audience. Big meaning...what, though?


I think maybe that's an important question. Anyone know? How big can the average blogger expect to get?