The Blog is Dead! Long Live the Blog
1) Since we're at a "blogging" conference, it seems appropriate to ask: is the word "blog" due for rehabilitation... or interment? If a blog isn't a particular form while at the same time the distinction of what kind of software is use to make it is both too broad to be useful (and eliminates a number of things we would probably all agree are blogs), then what is it? An ethos? It's hard to come up with even a single characteristic that is true of all these things we call blogs.
2) Historically (roughly speaking and in general order of significant adoption), there appears to be a trend in web publishing and collaboration mechanisms toward smaller and smaller "quanta" of information marking our presence-- from static pages -> blogs and wikis -> micro/lifeblogging (Twitter and Tumblr) -> attention data and gestures (audio scrobbling). Where do blogs fit in this new world attention order? If we need to be more specific, my informal research on this very group shows that in almost all cases, significant Twitter activity is associated with a significant decrease in blog activity (whether measured in volume or frequency). Is/was the traditional blog a poor fit for our desire to express ourselves and share? Or are we, as some have said, merely being lazy and falling prey to our ever-decreasing attention spans?
3) Where do blogs (or the characteristics and approaches that shall not be named but that we know as blogs) fit into the social media picture? People want to tell stories and create narratives... the traditional written structure of word-(image)-word is just one form of doing so. There is constant discussion around the globe about a new orality and emerging literacies predicated upon the use of multimedia, animation, visualization, social media, and web storytelling sites. Isn't the ability to scan, search, and apprehend content relatively quickly an essential part of the popularity of blogs... and aren't these just the things that audio and video blogging, Seesmic, Utterz and other "media blogging" tools lack?
4) I was sad to find this panel opposite the "***k Stats, Make Art" presentation because it often feels to me that all the discussion about "user generated content" and "information" and "artifacts" obscures and minimizes the passion that seems characteristic of the blogs and bloggers that I care about. If there's one thing that this panel (not counting the facilitator) shares, it's a significant passion and dedication that elevates their presence in the web community to the level of artisan and guide. As bloggers, then, what are you? What do you strive to be? The label "participant" seems reductive. Would Faulkner be a "participant" in this medium? Would Picasso be creating "content"?