The Bloggen Canon
In the future, the Western Canon will be completely eliminated and replaced with the great works of literature known as Blogs. Perhaps not. But as it seems, I've been reading more of Gawker and New Yorkish and a few other prof-blogs, as well as some of those added under Linkywinks.
One might wonder where I have the time to read all this with a campaign just a matter of a few weeks away [33 days!]. Well perhaps we are reading the Times and CNN less frequently, or at least without as much depth.
But what blogs must I read--a similar question as to what books must an English major / graduate student read to be legitimate? With all the thousands of blogs begun each day its hard to root out the better ones. And of course, only maybe the ten best will ever be read consistantly.
Perhaps we have accidentally stumbled across the greatest challenge of the Information Age: how do we winnow away the information so we read the relevant information without missing crucial elements.
Well that's maybe why we have blogs. I think it seems a good portion of my blog has become a sort of quick link to interesting tidbits of information, with brief editorial commentary alongside it. But everytime someone does this, as bloggers, we are further adding to the information that readers must process. Imagine a chain of blog posts each linking to the next, each blogger adding their own commentary, and finally the original source. Its like a bad game of telephone.
So I propose eliminating novels, short fiction, poetry, and new editions of newspapers until we are entirely caught up with the last five years of the blog world. Good luck with that.
And a final side note, through no fault of our own, we have accidentally picked up the annoying habit of using "we" where we mean "I". Sometimes I float between these within a single post; sometimes it is days before I realize its even happened. But in either case, we can probably attribute this to reading Something Completely Similar with an unhealthy fervency.
One might wonder where I have the time to read all this with a campaign just a matter of a few weeks away [33 days!]. Well perhaps we are reading the Times and CNN less frequently, or at least without as much depth.
But what blogs must I read--a similar question as to what books must an English major / graduate student read to be legitimate? With all the thousands of blogs begun each day its hard to root out the better ones. And of course, only maybe the ten best will ever be read consistantly.
Perhaps we have accidentally stumbled across the greatest challenge of the Information Age: how do we winnow away the information so we read the relevant information without missing crucial elements.
Well that's maybe why we have blogs. I think it seems a good portion of my blog has become a sort of quick link to interesting tidbits of information, with brief editorial commentary alongside it. But everytime someone does this, as bloggers, we are further adding to the information that readers must process. Imagine a chain of blog posts each linking to the next, each blogger adding their own commentary, and finally the original source. Its like a bad game of telephone.
So I propose eliminating novels, short fiction, poetry, and new editions of newspapers until we are entirely caught up with the last five years of the blog world. Good luck with that.
And a final side note, through no fault of our own, we have accidentally picked up the annoying habit of using "we" where we mean "I". Sometimes I float between these within a single post; sometimes it is days before I realize its even happened. But in either case, we can probably attribute this to reading Something Completely Similar with an unhealthy fervency.
Labels: Blogging
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