As you may have of noticed, there has been a good deal of social discourse of late around blogging. Many self-labelled 'experts' have been penning articles attempting to outline the reasons for its new found popularity and social significance. Some I've read and some I've not. I won't bore you with the details related to my opinion on the subject - it would only add to the noise. What I will bore you with is a blurb from Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting that sheds some light on my take on blogging.
"The irresisitable proliferation of graphomania among politicians, taxi drivers, childbearers, lovers, murderers, thieves, prostitutes, officials, doctors, and patients shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down the streets and shout: 'We are all writers!'
For everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words.
One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived."
Kundera published this work in 1978. Obviously the web was 15 years away from being created, but that aside, it seems to me that he was speaking somewhat abstractly about blogging. I think he was on to something.
Is blogging graphomania?
Eric - 10/17/2002, 02:07 CST
Nice observation (prediction? warning?) by Kundera and timely reference by you. What do you suppose he was observing at the time that caused him to state this?
Regardless, it certainly works as an explanation for the "blogging condition" and even more insightfully it serves as a look into what is to come when critical mass is obtained.
My own prediction is a sort of shake out that occurs with all new technology. In the case of blogging it might not mean the death of the new players, but instead a clearing house might be created to organize the content into comprehensible reading or be used as a guide to direct readers to "credible" content.
In any case, it is an exciting time to be a part of this movement and I look forward to the time when access to information, opinions, ideas, and insight will exist from all the writers of the world.
Shane - 10/17/2002, 06:00 CST
The issue Kundera posits is that the literary noise that will be created by this influx of writing (pointless drivel?), will result in none of it being read - the "universal deafness and incomprehension" Kundera speaks of. I agree with him, for the most part, but I also think that blogging has become a meme, and as with most memes it will also lose its new-found popularity once the Next Big Thing thing comes along. Regardless of its popularity, I do think that the cream will rise to the top as far as blogging content goes, which is what you suggest (and I acquiesce) could happen through a democratized blog content clearing house of some sort.
