Sunday, December 23rd, 2007...12:56 pm

Blog, Essay, or Bloviation?

Jump to Comments

Is blogging but old bloviation writ small, or is it, like the emerging prose genres in the early print age, a new discourse for new ways of thinking? Is the blog the twenty-first century equivalent of Montaigne’s essays, or only the itch-scratching multimediated version of CB radio? Follow along, my friends, and we shall see. Your comments are welcome.

Sphere: Related Content

8 Comments

Filed under Culture

8 Comments

  • Marti
    December 27th, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    Hello! Nice to meet you! Best wishes to you in 2008!

  • Susanne
    December 27th, 2007 at 2:51 pm

    A blog is what you make it to.

    A new Kierkegaard maybe, we could discuss the basics of lifehood if you like ;-)

    To a prosperious 2008!

  • kgill
    December 27th, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    Interesting thoughts and a nice, clean design = a good start!

  • peter
    December 27th, 2007 at 7:27 pm

    Thomas,

    Good question! I’d like to point out one (important) difference I see between CB radio and blogging: While CB radio was accessible only _in theory_ to anybody, but needed quite a bit of very specialized equipment, blogging is really accessible to a much larger chunk of the population. (That is, in industrialized countries.) Computers are much more widespread than CB radios because they are so much less specialized and basically most households need one anyway. A higher number of people with access to the table equals a richer debate.

    By the way, nice design!

    Cheers,
    Peter

  • longt
    December 28th, 2007 at 9:50 am

    Thanks, Peter, for those observations. Actually, CB radio required only one piece of relatively inexpensive equipment, which was fairly portable (by 1970s standards) so it could be used on the road, at work or in the home. It was a form of radio communication for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t learn the complexities required for “ham” radio licensing (e.g. Morse code). It was also unpretentious, absorbing a working-class ethos (the communication device of choice for truck drivers). Like IMing and texting, it also had its own shorthand code (”ten-four good buddy”).

    I’d like to take credit for the design of this site, but that is the product of Verge New Media.

  • jonny goldstein
    December 29th, 2007 at 12:25 am

    I am pro bloviation. The word is just so delicious. Let’s have a celeberation; an ovation to bloviation.

  • Charles Ford
    December 31st, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    Tom:

    I love your well-chosen photos: they make you look like CNN’s Anderson Cooper, if he had lived in Norfolk for a generation and had been a little over ten years older than he is now.

    C. Ford

  • longt
    December 31st, 2007 at 3:54 pm

    Jonny Goldstein, how about cerebration and ovulation?

    Charles Ford, thanks for the compliment.

Leave a Reply