deafscribbler.blog-alloon.com

[Edited for correct attribution]

 We’ve Got Blog: How Weblogs are Changing Our Culture (2002) is an anthology, selected by the editors of Perseus Publishing, of various posts gleaned from the web on the then-burgeoning culture of blogs. Most of the essays are from 1999-2001; several authors, including Rebecca Blood, point to 1999 as being the widespread start of blogging. Some of the contributors are from the same pool of pioneering bloggers, the so-called “A-list” bloggers, such as Cameron Barrett, Derek M. Powazek, Rebecca Mead and others. I’m not gonna bother linking to their blogs, you can Google ‘em yourself. Most of the bloggers talked about are more of the A-listers as well, along with other notable bloggers such as journalist/blogger Dan Gillmor. At this time, the book reads more like a history book than a picture of current trends.

However, I still found the book useful for my topic of Deaf blogs. The thing of most interest to me was the original style of blogs (or rather, weblog). Weblogs were actually web logs, lists of links along with commentary and sometimes supplementary links to provide additional information or contrasting views. These were listed in chronological order and posted frequently to a webpage. Different authors used the same word to describe this style, a “filter.” 

Blogs appeared to evolve into online journals. The format remained the same as with the filter-style blog; regular posts were made, and listed on a webpage chronologically starting with most recent at the top. Neale Talbot posted a sardonic comparison between journals and blogs which boils down to “if you start writing 3000+ words about your personal life, it ain’t gonna give [your blog] one ounce of blog cred” (159). Short and sweet marks the blog-style journal. Longer form writing marks the other style.

Douglas Rushkoff, in “The Internet Is Not Killing Off Conversation but Actively Encouraging It,” calls the content in blogs “social currency” (117). Links, pictures, streaming video, and personal stories–all of the things shared on blogs–are materials people use to engage in conversation with one another. It’s easy to agree with this. Rare is the blog that does not allow commenting. Bloggers want to know if others are reading what they post, and if they approve or not.

What interested me the most about the “filter” style of blogging is the idea that one person (the blogger) is filtering the web through her or his perspective, gleaning what is interesting or noteworthy to her or himself. The Web is a massive amount of raw material and blogs started as a form of recontextualizing information according to the blogger’s perspectives and biases.

Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, in Chapter 3 of Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture, talk about how Deaf people have “a different center,” highlighted by a discussion on the meanings of “A-LITTLE-HARD-OF-HEARING” and “VERY HARD-OF-HEARING” as viewed from an English speaker and a Deaf speaker. For a Hearing person, “a little hard of hearing” means someone is more hearing than deaf, because the center (or norm) is Hearing. Being “hard of hearing” is a deviation from that norm, so if you deviate slightly from that, you are only “a little hard of hearing.” However, for a Deaf person, “a little hard of hearing” means someone is more deaf than hearing, because the center is “Deaf”, and whatever deviates from that is less Deaf and more hearing. Therefore for a Deaf person to call someone “a little hard of hearing,” that person is deemed as slightly less Deaf than the norm, but still far from the extreme (being Hearing).

So in relation to my topic of Deaf blogging, we deal with a filter based on a different center (actually multiple centers, because there is no single form of being Deaf–one can be deaf-oral, Deaf-African-American, Deaf-Feminist, Deaf-Catholic, et cetera). So a Deaf blogger’s posts will filter the content of the Web through her or his center. The latest voting results of American Idol might be less important to a Deaf blogger than proposed changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

Here, two different blogs commenting on the most recent Super Bowl. 
Peterdavid.net and Captions.com (I realize that this is stretching the definition of blog a bit, but the point is more focused on the content rather than format)

Other essays raise issues about authority and address the issue of filtering in different ways. A few authors hit upon the concept of blogging as a new literary genre. Joe Clark identifies the niche quality of blogging in an interview with Jordan Raphael. Joe Clark is an interesting contributor who has a direct relationship with the Deaf World and Deaf blogging through his efforts to make the Web accessible to all users. His interests overlap with the Deaf Community’s interests in the use of technology to make the Web accessible to the non-standard user (read: disabled or not Hearing, or non-English speaking). 

I was slightly disappointed that culture was not addressed very much in the book. The book didn’t live up to its subtitle, “How Weblogs are Changing Our Culture.” Understandably, this is only an early look at blogging and cultural changes happen over a longer period of time than was afforded in the publication of the book. One question was not answered though, “whose culture is being changed?” Joe Clark, in “Deconstructing ‘You’ve Got Blog’” nears a definition when he focuses on the “A-List bloggers” and the commonalities they all share. They all know each other, all refer to each others’ blogs, and all are well-funded people who work in the Internet industry. However, the book doesn’t really show how culture was changed. What was before blogging, and what was after? Rebecca Blood, in “Weblogs: A History and Perspective,” raises the issue of blogging as a democraticizing tool in the midst of corporate information control and overload, which call to mind Horkheimer and Adorno’s work (I could be remembering the wrong names) on cultural reading.

There’s more I could say but I’ll save that for my final paper later on. I’ve already covered the main ideas that came to mind as I completed reading this book. And I lost a paragraph! Grr. Better one paragraph than the entire post…