Glen wrote this astute paragraph in his guest post on Geert Lovink’s theory of blogging:
For some reason many media theorists seem to think it is bad that ‘little people’ produce media that is organised around their shared interests rather than the old situation of having their interests dictated or at least cultivated in the broadcast model of media. The classic example is that people are more interested in their cats than the ‘politically important’ Israel-Palestinian affair. A general injunction is sounded out to become more political (that is, to recognise the importance of political interests), without properly understanding what is going on when the terrain of interest has shifted away from the received categories. There is a disconnection here, not of the media apparatus but of empathy. To put it in such a way that may anger a few people, but I think captures precisely the problem: Maybe more Palestinians need to blog about cats?
Pavlov’s Cat has just got a digital camera, and has been posting scrumptious photos of meals she’s made from her home grown tomatoes. As someone who’s got high on the list of his new year’s resolutions cooking more often, and a desire to emulate one of my friends’ impressive collection of potted herbs and veges on her back deck on my balcony, I can relate.
But I can relate more because my new phone has a 2 megapixel camera in it – what not that long ago would have been the same as a standalone digital camera. So I’ve finally caught the bug of documenting stuff in my life and that I happen across – and have been helped in doing this by the fact that my phone also takes a 512mb memory card I can plug straight into my laptop without a cable.
No doubt I’ll soon, to Clive Hamilton’s great horror, discover a need for an actual camera.
In fact I discovered it last night when a friend and I went to see Coda play. She could take photos, but my flash wasn’t up to a darkened music venue.
Hamilton’s anti-materialism might rule this out as a “need” (but isn’t this undertheorised and still a residue of the dreary Marxist “to each according to his needs” bizzo?) but I can’t see that this “consumerism” is actually ethically wrong if it enables us to express and document and share things important to us visually.
Glen also wrote:
People blog when they are compelled to. Blogging in itself is an effort, one that often requires a lot of courage. There is a line drawn between the world (of some happening) and oneself across a blog. This existential dimension of blogging is completely absent from most of ‘old media’. [my emphasis]
I think that’s spot on too.
And although I’ve been writing occasional posts here about what I get up to, I think often the reason why I don’t write more personally is a failure of courage, but perhaps also of opportunity – an opportunity technology is now giving me and indeed prompting me to do so.
When I was going for a walk last week, for instance, along Merthyr Road, it occurred to me that there are lots of restaurants within walking distance of me in New Farm and Teneriffe that I’ve never been to. I thought I might have more inclination to check them out if I blogged about them, but then I worried that no one would be interested because I’m not practiced in the arts of food criticism. But I can always post a photo.
This is what I had for dinner on Saturday Night at the local Indonesian joint on Brunswick St:
That doesn’t give much context. And I haven’t bothered to rotate it.
And I’m back with my previous concern about my inability to write intelligently about food, despite my enthusiasm for it (I’d have the same problem with wine – one reason why I contemplated doing a wine appreciation course). Maybe it’s a challenge for me as a writer to learn a new vocabulary.
But I’m also unsure if this matters. Because what I would not be doing if I were to photoblog New Farm restaurants would be what someone writing restaurant reviews for print would be doing. I’d be writing much more personally and within a range of different contexts and links.
I still haven’t taken the plunge, and I might do it on my myspace instead of here, because I don’t know if LP’s audience are interested in photoblogging from me. (Incidentally, a guy I met who’s a Maths PhD last night – frequent LP commenter Sacha knows him – asked “what social networking sites are you on”? about ten seconds after we’d been introduced and myspace have just released data showing that, contrary to stereotypes, there are lots of over 25s on the site).
Maybe you are. It would be different course from my usual psephological or sociological fare, but who’s to say really, unless I started doing it…
So we’re back where we began – with the much troubled distinction between personal and political. I’ve argued myself more than once that the dismissal of, say, catblogging or foodblogging as “personal” is unwarranted and often an elitist move (and I think that’s partly captured by Glen’s comments too). Of course, some of what I might write about, say, restaurants, would be of interest mainly to me.
But what is it about the posture of writing for the MSM that removes any personal interest? Are some of the grumpy op/edders perhaps grumpy “in real life”? Are all the views and news represented for us disinterested?
Anyway, here’s a photo I took last night at the Columbian. It’s intended to be an oblique (or otherwise) comment about all this stuff.
NB: I didn’t take it with any of this in mind, or at least no more than the preliminary musings I’ve been having on all this for about a week or so. I took it because a couple of Heinekens made me think it would be a fun thing to do.
Take 2…blog ate my comment.
Will digest the Lovink article and respond when I can…looks pretty anti-people to me.
Hamilton’s miserable sneering at what he chooses to call the ‘Growth Fetish‘ has little to do with my sort of Marxism, at any rate. Sounds like conservative reaction to me.
Massive economic growth is an absolute precondition to any sort of world where everyone could have posessions ‘according to their needs’.
Anyway, enjoy my photos from dinner last Tuesday night at Efes One Turkish Restaurant, Sandgate Rd, Albion.
Flickr rocks.
Yeah, get a Flickr account, Mark. Then just let it happen.
Yes, yes, it’s “My Friend Flickr.”
Ouch, that was bad. Okay, screw it, I’m off to OTB. I feel a hunch coming on…
(But those two are right — Flickr is kool.)
Stop photoblogging and go do one. A good course is really worth your while. I have no idea about Brisvegas, but the TAFE course at Ryde in Sydney is well worth the time and effort.
Mark _does_ have a Flickr already.
I dunno… There’s plenty of people who scrutinize what people in medieval times ate. I like to think that people a century from now would be fascinated by what we eat now. Particularly, will there be a time when we have done so much “fusion/east-west” dabbling that some ‘traditional’ fare might be lost? What if Mars Bars were no longer available? People in the future might just have to imagine, reading blog posts, what a deep fried Mars Bar is really like. They’d be substituting things, trying to make it work. Some 90 year old nob will be saying that their genetically modified flour just doesn’t taste like when they were a kid and doesn’t make a batter with the same texture.
When there are books from ye olde England teaching new wives how to go about keeping house and how to make a chicken pie, why shouldn’t someone 100 years from now be intrigued by a candid, not very food critic, “I had a great time at Caravan Serai last night” blog post?
I don’t think we need to worry about whether something we do now is crap or not. People in the future will decide if what we’ve left behind is worthwhile or not. After all, aren’t we still fascinated by fuzzy pictures of the loch ness monster? Maybe one day there will be someone who isn’t complaining that your shot is out of focus and has the wrong exposure.
Crazy talk. Deep Fried Mars Bars are eternal.
However, you have given me the idea to become Australia’s leading deep-fried snacky-treat photographer. Nice.
I had the same dilemma recently. I was putting musicblogging, photoblogging and wineblogging together with science blogging. Decided as a revamp to just stick to science on one blog and start a separate one for the rest. In my opinion they just didn’t fit together. Here’s some of my earlier pics anyway.
Funny you should bring up the whole trying-to-recapture past recipes thing, I read this book excerpt about one of the first cookbooks ever yesterday. Those recipes sound okay to me!
My blog is a good third food-blogging, mainly recipes but also ideas about food and ingredients. I just mash it in there with the politics et al. Screw it, I figure; there are plenty of people interested in both.
Yes, I have also been on a slightly obsessed food blogging kick lately and have contemplated that I may well be boring people who prefer to read about politics etc.
However, I have decided that I am really creating my blog for me anyway (well, our blog for us – since I share it) and so it is silly to censure what I feel like putting up – people can always skip over the parts that don’t interest them.
That said, I have restrained myself from food/photoblogging over here for the time being – despite the fairly eclectic nature of the site.
“…So I’ve finally caught the bug of documenting stuff in my life and that I happen across…”
A case of technology leading the masses, adapting lifestyles
Is this the technology cart is leading the horse?, where consumerism is taking us?, shame Mark, shame
Yeah, how terrible of all those people who enjoy using cheap and effective tools and toys.
Bad people! Be more political! Stop teh FUN!
I’ve been letting both the Lovink paper and Glen’s response to it sink in slowly. NB those who found either or both impenetrable: let it steep. It’ll come to you.
One problem I see with the Lovink is that it takes as a given (I’m simplifying, of necessity) the early theorisation of blogging as ‘the new journalism’, and my own view is that this may from the outset have been a false start, a bum steer, or at least a very incomplete analysis. Or, as ThirdCat would say, ‘Blogging isn’t the new anything. It’s blogging.’ From what I’ve read in the blogosphere over the last 18 months (yes yes, I’m just a toddler in blogland), the paradigm shift has been far more radical than this ‘new journalism’ assumption would imply.
Those who still engage with the ‘blogging as the new journalism’ notion are still, as Glen says, essentially in thrall to what the MSM constructs as ‘news’, so that kind of blogging is always already going to be basically second-order and second-rate, for the reasons he and Lovink both give.
But the documentation of life-as-she-is-lived from day to day and hour to hour, of course including world events and public life and one’s reaction to them but also including the events of interiority (whose logical conclusion is full-blown emo-blogging, for which there is also room in life) is something that only individual bloggers can do, and respond to in each other’s lives.
Example: how many of us are looking forward at the moment to Armagnac’s first post about the new bub, and news of Zoe’s ditto? There is more than a whiff of old-fashioned anarchy in this, in the sense that it deliberately bypasses state interference and control in the way people relate to each other.
The gender divide is also very obvious, which is what prompted me in picking up the ‘first sentence meme’ doing the rounds of (some) American feminist blogs to observe that my own blog is
What strikes me most about Mark’s post above is the idea that the technology might contribute to the breaking down of this gender agenda (I don’t think anyone can deny that it exists). I love the idea that blokes might tell us more about their own lives if they could/did post photos. (Anonymous Lefty and the kitten Polly are a case in point.) The truly exciting thing about blogging is that it gives people a chance to think about their lives in new ways.
Oops, moderated.
I bet it was ‘p*ntywaist’.
Mark, you could submit that photo to The Mirror Project.
Thanks Dr Cat, that’s a good way of putting it.
I’m at the point where my partner sees me looking at something or thinking about something and he says, “You’re going to blog about this, aren’t you?” He’s usually right.
In fact, right now I am uploading photos of my dog to Flickr and I shall probably partake in Dog-blog Friday, as many other bloggers around the world do, for no other reason than it makes me happy. And also because dog bloggers need to balance out all the cat blogging out there.
Spot on, Doctor Cat. It is the boundaries such analyses assume which makes reading them soooo frustrating. They rarely mention fiction, for example.
This is the kind of thing I mean.
Um …
This is etc.
They really don’t know what to do with it except splutter and carry on about properly trained journalists and self-indulgent twaddle. The idea that anyone other than those specifically working within the MSM could have anything of interest to say seems to be prepostorous. We all remember the Jim Schembri article.
I tend to go through phases on my blog. Although I rarely write very personal things, I oscillate between teevee commentary, amusing examples of media wiggedywackness and anecdotal stories. Like others, I find it hard to classify my blog and sometimes do question whether or not I can include a particular piece if it seems so radically different to everything else. I suppose one of the concerns with this is that you might attract a certain audience that will be flummoxed by the radical departure of theme – sort of what might happen if you went to Go Fug Yourself and discovered a serious post about relationship problems.
This is one of the only positives I can see about the Beta system – labelling. But I am rigidly set in my old blogger ways and so much remain haphazard and free.
jean burgess up your way (QLD) has written her PhD on vernacular creativity, and she has run digital story telling workshops. she blogs at creativity/machine
i have been fixing up my falcon since I have been back. the photos posted to my flickr account have been instrumental in getting help from people on the big online ford forums. i have worked on cars previously and the last time I did something of this scale with my falcon there were no online forums like these. i have still encountered some problems, but the help i have received has otherwise been fantastic and I really appreciate it.
It involves a certain kind of experiential knowledge, like there are a few mechanics on the forum, but they are mostly enthusiasts who have a whole heap of experience and a willingness to share and help others. The distribution of this experiential knowledge (‘know how’) was in the past limited to locality-based groups (families, neighbourhood mates, etc) or more rigid institutional social groups like the formal car clubs. Sometimes the magazines used to distribute such knowledge, but again there is a different temporality, and they mostly don’t do this anymore.
So as well as the creative exitential dimension of self-discovery and so on is the more functional aspect in new distributions of experiential knowledge. My example may not be very good because it is very blokey and largely mimics already existing relations of knowledge.
I read/look at a couple of photoblogs which I consider to be ‘true’ photoblogs in that they are arranged around pictures. They rarely have pure-text entries. A great many blogs, mine included, are mostly textual with the occasional or even the regular inclusion of pictures, but the pictures are an add-on to the words. I rarely use photos in a primary way. In that sense, text-based blogs don’t differ all that much from newspaper or magazine columns. Maggie Alderton’s column in The Australian magazine could easily be a blog and many blogs could easily be magazine columns. Photoblogs are something new (not that new any more, but relatively new), in my view, and they’re exciting for that newness and for their power. Immediacy is part of that power but not the only ingredient.
Indeed. As Kate also points out, life is lived with on eye on how you could turn it into a post.
In case this hasn’t been mentioned already, readers of this and Glen’s post might be interested in this post over at if:book Blogging restructures consciousness and its inspiration: Being and blogging.
Apologies if either has been mentioned before.
At the moment I’m confined to a four mile radius by circumstances so going through different blogs and reading about life, food, cats, dogs and politics is a life saver. I just wish I didn’t gravitate to so many food blogs with photos.
Dr. Cat — are you familiar with the work of the English critic/marathon diarist James Agate, and his marvelous distinction between “vital” and “important”? Worth digging up, and has a kind of sharp relevance to the whole personal/political/blogs phenom; Jacques Barzun has a wonderful essay on Agate in his anthology The Jacques Barzun Reader, where the quote is given prominence.
I’ve already done my small bit. And in words and up to the post-post-non-ironic-modern minute with photos.
Yep. It’s here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21775057@N00/
All that’s up there so far is photos from my birthday drinks last year when I borrowed a digital camera.
Thanks for the suggestion, Kate!
Photoblogging really can help break down the “had to be there” barrier too. It can work better than having to wait til your friends have downed their 3rd drink before trying to squeeze the it-was-hilarious-really story in.
Mark. Having seen your mirror photo, I am so disillusioned that you don’t actually look like your gravatar.
aww… you and yr friends are so cute mark!!!
Btw…IF you find a not too expensive wine appreciation course, Fynn and I may join you.
Still steeping in the Lovink article, but people might want to have a look at the “Picture Australia” group at flickr. It’s a project being organised out of the National Library – they are encouraging people to upload their Australian photos, tagged properly so they can be searched for at the Picture Australia website.
http://www.pictureaustralia.org/
They encourage people to licence stuff under Creative Commons (make it available for other people to use), but it is not compulsory.
You can browse the almost-800 Picture Australia photos tagged ‘brisbane’ here:
http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=brisbane&w=83633840@N00&m=pool&s=int&z=t
My gravatar’s FDR, pingu
Sg, I’ll have a look around. I think the Grape used to run some.
Mark it’s an interesting post (and thanks for those reference, David).
I certainly appreciate your point about Hamilton’s ‘anti-materialism’ ruling out the ‘need’ for a camera being undertheorised and still a residue of the dreary Marxist “to each according to his needsâ€?. What definition of exchange allows for ‘anti-’sentiments? I think breaks a difficult to prove – including the requirement to ‘downshift’ entire lifestyles. This, of course, isn’t to deny that shortages do exist; but that the impetus for our action requires some more careful thought.
Which brings me to the substance of the piece. How can you sharply split the aspiring YouTubing/Myspacing/flickring kiddies of today with those able to commission self portraits in the 15th Century? Sure the scale has changed, but as Hubert Burda’s astutely observes,
So, in a sense, it’s no different to commissioning a bigger portrait with more intricate stuff around it to be hung in a better gallery that your neighbour. Obviously the absolutely instantaneous nature of communications is new, a la moblogging, but I suspect that that’s quite a different phenomenon to that one of self-conscious-presentation and representation you’re meditating about.
Would people be interested in seeing your cat/photo/foodblog? I guess you’d have to ask ‘people.’ For what it’s worth, I like to see innovation.
In general, dk.au, I suspect you could come up with a lot of parallels between earlier modern developments and blogging.
This whole internetty/bloggy/web 2.0 shit is just “happening because it’s happening”. Everyone’s making it up as they go along while all the theorists and their theories are scampering along behind gasping “Wait for me. What’s the address again? I think I knew someone who used to live there back in the nineties.”
1. I now spend much more time getting my news and other’s opinions from blogworld than from the mainstream media.
2. Warning: flickr is addictive! First it’s flickr lite, then it’s a pro account, then it’s posting photos to as many groups as you can. I can’t get off!
Mug Punter, I am a confirmed cheapskate, and so was quite surprised at myself when I went over the 200-photo-display limit for non-paying users: my first thought was to look at the next payday budget to see if I could afford the fee (just over A$ 30).
Luckily, I could.
I can see that now, but you squashed the image, so it looks like some grumpy old academic geezer.
I thought it was Phillip Ruddock. Really.
I thought it was an ironic comment or something.
Some photoblogging for you folks:
OK…I can see its FDR now.
I think the fact that avatars are square and the picture is taller than it is wide created the ‘Ruddock’ illusion. In the big version you can see that FDR’s head is actually quite long.
Yes a lot of them suffer quite a bit from being squeezed into a square.
Just clip a bit off the bottom of the frame (unnecessary suit & tie pixels) to proportion it properly within the square, et voila! He’s back to his grand old Knickerbocker Dutchman self.