Blogs – an oral tradition of sorts
Blogers in Salon like to reflect from time to time. It’s usually a month and a semester after starting the thing. Then there is the 10K hit rate. It’s my 10K, so I will expatiate a bit. What struck me particularly in Monday’s Wall Street Journal was an article of page one of Marketplace. It was all about war related blogs. Apparently the military allows soldiers to blog fairly freely in the field, and maybe will use the technology for communications.
When I was in Gulf War I, I kept a journal. I felt that the events around me were important enough to record my experiences vis-à-vis said events. Today, I am quite certain, I would have bloged. The overabundance of information contained in these “Diaries for all to see” will give future anthropologists unprecedented insight into early 21st century culture. Can you imagine if we had access to the thoughts of 13th century monks, peasants, soldiers, and dukes? I am really curious as to the consequences of the blog culture. I may be delusional, but I don’t think that anything can obviate the need for a culture’s bard or troubadour – that person who gains insight into a people or a tradition and manages to capture it in a very accessible, sometimes even primitive fashion. The utility of the bard’s work is in the fact that he says what the “common” man cannot say by himself. So while we are saying a great deal and revealing a great deal in our blogs, I truly wonder at what we are not managing to express. Only time will tell, I guess.
In the meanwhile, just like the 24/7 war reportage has made the world yet again smaller (and much more uncomfortable, which is good in this particular case), blogs provide a (very selective) access to the inner valves and pistons of thousands of people. May not be a global village square – more like a global village bar, or as the more skeptical/cynical among us might say, a public pissouar.
6:11:24 AM 
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