Sketch for a comic I may never make.
I’ve been a reader of Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic for about a year now. It’s one of my favorite blogs, covering a myriad of topics that range from DRM on refrigerators to Qanon Gamification and Vaccine Passports. I like to think of it as a daily dive into how strangely science-fiction our present day society has become.
Doctorow writes thoroughly and thoughtfully about every topic he tackles and he’s quite generous with links. Oftentimes a single blog post turns into an inter-textual reading extravaganza for me, akin to Wikipedia-surfing. I’m quite amazed at how he manages to do this daily (on top of all his other commitments—he’s published several books and graphic novels.) I’ve often wondered how it’s even possible.
Well, I just discovered an article called “The Memex Method” (looks like it was published just last week) where Doctorow lays out the hows and whys of his blogging habit and discusses its various advantages.
“Peter “peterme” Merholz coined the term “blog” as a playful contraction of “web-log” — like a ship’s log in which hardy adventurers upon the chaotic virtual seas could record their journeys…
Like those family trip-logs, a web-log serves as more than an aide-memoire, a record that can be consulted at a later date. The very act of recording your actions and impressions is itself powerfully mnemonic, fixing the moment more durably in your memory so that it’s easier to recall in future, even if you never consult your notes.
The genius of the blog was not in the note-taking, it was in the publishing. The act of making your log-file public requires a rigor that keeping personal notes does not. Writing for a notional audience — particularly an audience of strangers — demands a comprehensive account that I rarely muster when I’m taking notes for myself. I am much better at kidding myself my ability to interpret my notes at a later date than I am at convincing myself that anyone else will be able to make heads or tails of them.
Writing for an audience keeps me honest.”
The other bit that struck me was how he likened it to Vannevar Bush’s “Memex” thought experiment (from the 1945 article, “As We May Think”) which outlines “a machine that serves to organize its user’s thoughts and semi-automatically bring related ideas together to help the user synthesize disparate insights and facts into new, larger works.”
I probably shouldn’t quote so much from the article but it was such an inspiring read that I want to note it down for future reference. You can read the rest of it HERE.
I really like the philosophy behind this, where the act of blogging has value in and of itself, rather than as a stepping stone to “building a brand” or “finding an audience.” I don’t know. I like the thought of having more readers but chasing them down is like putting the cart before the horse, you know? I started this blog six months ago as a reaction to all that social media toxicity, and I’m rather enjoying the calm of having a public notebook that doesn’t have all those built-in infinity pool hooks. I often have a fog in my brain and I find that writing for the sake of writing clears it out.
Warren Ellis described blogging as “leaving traces”—just putting stuff out there as a side-effect of engaging with ideas. Publishing as a way of thinking out loud. I’m still quite scattered in this regard, bouncing between YouTube and Instagram and Twitter, but as I move forward I’m hoping I’ll find my groove.
Anyway, this is all feeding into my Monday morning as I launch into some aggressive planning for the next few months, figuring out how to parse my next big project and really putting some thought into where all my time and attention should be going. Wishing you all a lovely week. See you on the next trace.