In the back of my mind I have struggled with the concept of “blogging” since the moment I encountered it.  As a writing trainer, I have spent many summers training teachers on the recursive writing process.  A writer is encouraged to revisit writing again and again to revise.  The writer takes an idea and revisits it to form word pictures that can vividly express thought (hopefully) to a particular audience.  Blogging, imho, is quite different.  I am not certain where revision fits, I am not certain of my audience…the only thing of which I am certain is my willingness to learn and share what I learn.  Perhaps my audience is nobody.  “I’m nobody, who are you?”

For some reason, however, my blog has kept a focus on themes and topics within the field of librarianship.  While that is not surprising (and I do feel I ramble on about personal perspective entirely too much), I seem to have steered clear of other interests: music, faith, philosophy, cooking, hiking, and so on.  The topic of blogging falls into my goal of investigating current technology tools for the purpose of information delivery and education.

Writers must be willing to take risks- being misunderstood, making mistakes that are exposed to the reader.  As more people are writing through new technological modes, publishing opportunities have changed.  Anyone can publish on the web through blogging.  I have felt this sense that my blog is contributing to a huge mass of trivial electronic clutter of little value. My ears perked up when I heard of a book with the title Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger.  We now live in the age of push-technology instead of pull-technology (in the words of librarian Joyce Valenza), where society provides the bulk of information instead of a “top-down” hierarchy.  This video by Michael Wesch shows that change better than anything I can say: Information R/evolution.  (Watch in high-quality.)