1.1.02

 
What do you think of this, Torill? It's not exactly taken from the blog, well only indirectly, but what the heck. What I want to claim is that presentation affects thinking and so that presentation form either affects or perhaps to an extent is methodology. There are other aspects to methodology too of course but this is one. This is also related to what Lisbeth wrote about thinking about who you write to.s I find my arguments very convincing but I don't have any references (either I've forgotten where I've read this or I've brilliantly surmised it myself from untold other reading). I know I've read about the printing press affecting how we write and I could probably find some kind of reference for that. The following is definitely a draft but I'm thinking of it as raw material for our essay. It reads a bit like an introduction but needn't be, I think I've written that way because I'm writing my way into thinking the essay.

There are several ways in which we can think about blogs as a method. Blogs are
a) a presentation tool
b) a tool for note-taking and possibly for analysing notes
c) a sharing and an arena for discussion

[of course we should discuss this if we use it. this could be one possible disposition?]

The "blogs are..." statement could have many other predicates (did I use that grammatical term correctly? I mean "the rest of the sentence after the verb" ;) We could do a survey of how bloggers in general describe their blogging? For instance we could collect adjectives they tend to use about their blogs - perhaps the result would include: intimate, immediate... And then we could reflect on this in relation to academic work?

Here's a bit about the presentation tool aspect.

Presentation forms always affect the way we work and think. Different ways of presenting data and arguments create/encourage/shape different methodolgies. The ancient Greeks developed a rhetoric based on their presentation form: the speech. Since the aim was to convince a present audience emotive and persuasive techniques were as important as objective logic (might need a ref or to calm that assertation down a bit) The dialogue developed from an oral pedagogy......

Academic practice since then has developed many alternative forms of presentation. In the middle ages commentaries written into the margins of manuscripts were common, and so new ideas were developed in close contact and relation with previous writings. With the printing press the idea of objective, detached science and thought became stronger and scholars wrote individual works that could stand alone and that were less attached to a particular time or place than oral speeches, a known audience or a handcopied text bound within a particular traditon and probably a very limited geographical area, perhaps a particular convent or library.

Many have considered how computers and networks affect our writing and thinking. Often these considerations have been abstract and ungrounded in practice (e.g. some of the exuberant ideas about hypertext liberating us, but perhaps it's a bit dull to include this kind of reference since it's been done lots of times before and isn't always completely fair, especially since these ungrounded utopic things are all ten years old and their authors have moved on since. Perhaps an "as many have noted, thes considerations have often been.... and refs to the many who have noted it.) This essay attempts to examine ways in which using weblogs as a presentation tool affects our thought.

Here we should probably note characteristics of a weblog. E.g.
- chronologically ordered
- informal? personal? (not necessarily but common)
- brief notes, frequent posting
- ...

we can find some of this in other articles about weblogs, I think Rebecca Blood's essay has some of this.

We are not arguing that publication and presentation determine content and form completely. The relationship is not necessary but neither is it arbitrary: it is contingent. [this is extremely inspired by Toril Moi's clarificaton of the relationship between sex and gender, and by her very careful way of clarifying exactly what she means and what she doesn't mean.] While experimental writers and artists have always pushed the limits of any medium to its limits, this experimentation highlights the pragmatic presence of limits. Where there are limits there is also a middle ground that most practitioners will follow. Weblogs can be many things, but they are often one thing. This form of publication tends towards certain methods and ways of thinking.

(Probable references: Richard Lanham, The Electronic Word, Michael Heim: Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing, maybe Ong though I'm not sure, some of those books about the printing press perhaps)