Coming to You From Across Time *&* Space....
At Jaelyn's Birthday Party, my friend Matt the funny cognitive psychologist was doing a bit of blogging flogging.
"I blog." He laughed. "I type up ideas that I have in a word document and if one of my friends asks me what I think about that idea, I'll print out my document and give it to them. See! I'm blogging!"
Some poopoo'd him loudly, I agreed that there's no conceptual difference between his blogging and how most blogs function. Other blogger floggers took their opportunity to take their lame and cliche potshots. Yeah! They shouted into the fray of conversation. Why would we want to pour out our guts in front of a bunch of strangers! We can hardly bring ourselves to talk about these things with our friends!
"I just don't crave boundlessness." Continued Matt-the-funny-and-occasionally-wise-cognitive psychologist, "Isn't that what the internet is all about? No boundaries! I like living with my limits." The theological concepts of finitude and creaturliness are two of his favorite talking points....(and his talks on them are entrancing...)
I think he's partly right. Blogging is a kind of will-to-immortality. It is an attempt to tesseract across time and space to be with people who are far. It does try to cheat distance and locale in order to tie together people who do not do life in proximity....
Obviously I'm not drawing the lines in the same places he is...but...I am interested in developing a more coherent way of thinking about how we choose to diffuse our identity throughout various mediums....
"I blog." He laughed. "I type up ideas that I have in a word document and if one of my friends asks me what I think about that idea, I'll print out my document and give it to them. See! I'm blogging!"
Some poopoo'd him loudly, I agreed that there's no conceptual difference between his blogging and how most blogs function. Other blogger floggers took their opportunity to take their lame and cliche potshots. Yeah! They shouted into the fray of conversation. Why would we want to pour out our guts in front of a bunch of strangers! We can hardly bring ourselves to talk about these things with our friends!
"I just don't crave boundlessness." Continued Matt-the-funny-and-occasionally-wise-cognitive psychologist, "Isn't that what the internet is all about? No boundaries! I like living with my limits." The theological concepts of finitude and creaturliness are two of his favorite talking points....(and his talks on them are entrancing...)
I think he's partly right. Blogging is a kind of will-to-immortality. It is an attempt to tesseract across time and space to be with people who are far. It does try to cheat distance and locale in order to tie together people who do not do life in proximity....
Obviously I'm not drawing the lines in the same places he is...but...I am interested in developing a more coherent way of thinking about how we choose to diffuse our identity throughout various mediums....
posted by Redbaerd at 9:12 AM
3 Comments:
I wish I could have been there for the party. It sounds like it was magical and wildly fun.
Love you,
ang
a friend of mine once stated, "if you really want to keep up with what's going on in my life, just read my blog." i found out later, that he was going through an ugly separation and moving from Germany to South Africa. and at the time, there was nothing that indicated as such on his blog!
i would argue that our blogs have many boundaries. they are limited to our little community of a blogosphere. and let's face it, if i wrote every thought, every regret, every anger, every sin, every event on my blog, i would be boring to most, and just plain psycho to others.
compared to a pat on the shoulder from a good friend, a good laugh over the phone, or a great plate of spaghetti with your family, blogs are indeed quite finite.
(sorry this is so long)
I have to agree with ang - the party sounds like a priceless experience! I'm glad for Jaelyn and Addison; there's something extraordinary about having parents who are great storytellers and are willing to 'step into' the stories they tell..my stepmother has this gift, and I benefited from it richly as a kid!
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