July is coming to an end and it’s hot, hot, hot. The weather service has issued a heat advisory for Michigan from now until Tuesday. According to the NWS the heat wave began on Saturday and is going to continue while high pressure locks in over the southeast and low pressure over the plains combine to send southwest winds my way.
So it is time for another meta post. Since I returned to the daily blogging routine in mid-June I’ve been thinking about what weblogging does for me. I’ve noticed recently that blogging, for me at least, is about self-discovery, finding out what issues are bugging me enough to write about in a public forum. I’ve believed for a long time that too many people fail to examine their own thoughts or place in the world. Blogging is one way to do that; it is about improving one’s reflective practice.
Here’s the list of what’s been top of my mind for the past month.
- Economics. Four posts in this series, a kickoff on Yochai Benkler and peer production, some righteous anger in response to The Corporation, a review of Richard Florida’s star turn at the Cato Institute weblog in June, some questions about the power of distributed problem solving
- Education. Four posts - more on the declining economic value of education, some disconnected imaginings for a new education, interpolations in response to a review by Geert Lovink, and gesturing toward a new birth for community education, and yet more models for sharing experience and knowledge over the web
- Rhetoric. The decline of political rhetoric, and the failed appeals to freedom of evangelicals.
- Information management, mostly personal. Two posts here - first recording my current personal information management practice, second attempting to recover information I’d read before. On a social level, the information infrastructure for responding to emergencies
- Aesthetics. The connection between art and teaching, getting annoyed by Hollywood and book trilogies, speculations about time travel in mainstream and genre fiction, a celebration of Ren and Stimpy, praise for Emusic and small music labels. I’m disappointed again and again by the inability to search for music by label on iTunes. I noticed the same thing in books today when I tried to find information about Vintage publishers. I had to hack at the URL for half an hour before I could get past the Random House landing page. Am I the only one who buys books and CDs based on the collective brand of a label or publishing house?
- Warfare, stimulated by the eruptions in the Middle East. Connections to American empire and the machinery of war in the guise of the military industrial complex.
- Criticisms of technology. Mostly a favorable quote of the people conformed as the masses by Ulises Ali Mejias. And a boost for technology, in the form of past dreams about shaking the dust of this planet off my feet and seeing the universe
- Religion. Minor thoughts about religion and the workplace.
- History. A brief reminder to remember our history on Independence day. Also related to the elision of Eisenhower and the military industrial complex and other vain attempts to bestir the United States of Amnesia.
- Personal and meta musings. Thinking about neophilia, whether to split weblogs into pieces, attempting to summarize my current interests and concerns
- A few link dumps. From the 11th, the 24th, the 26th
I’ll note one intriguing finding from this list. There’s very little connected to my professional or educational interests. I don’t know whether this means I’m pursuing the wrong career course or simply that the blog is a way to vent in areas where I don’t have a vested interest. Perhaps this will be more fodder for future posts.
