Danah Boyd – Blogging Out Loud

Rather than posting a summary of this session, I’m going to post my coments. This session had a ton of good information in it. The first thing that was interesting about the session is getting the point of view of librarians from a non-librarian. Unfortunately, non-librarians view point of us still isn’t good. Our actions have continued to make us seen as the gatekeeper hoarding knowledge. Additionally, the “on high academic mentality” of librarians hasn’t enhanced our reputation either. The fact that we are seen like this is distressing to me but overall not surprising. We deserve it. We act like we are the keepers of all information and the only people with the right to judge the quality and value of information and that is just wrong. We don’t know it all and we need to partner and build relationships with a variety of organization to foster better information access for all.

Beyond the opening wake up call. I loved the fact that the speaker had an strong understanding of blogs and bloggers. One of the best quotes from the session was “What is a blog if not a facet of a person’s identity”. Her talk really captured the ephemeral nature of blogs and the fact that posts are written for the now. One of her main points is that blogs are about communication not information and what the ramifications of this are. She also pointed out the importance of blogs as an archive of contemporary culture. From the perspective of someone with an anthropology degree, I was really excited that Danah highlighted this aspect of blogging. It was also good to have someone talk about the nature of blogs for those who don’t blog. While there are a significant number of bloggers at the conference, not everyone here is a blogger and while one can understand the technology behind a blog fairly easily, it is much more difficult to understand the social and culture aspects and effect of blogs. Danah talked at length about the difference between blogs and articles. Including the fact that blogs are much more reflexsive then articles and it is often easier to find out the bias. In a post-processualist/post-modernist world where no work is without bias and there is a belief that the best we can do is openly discuss our bias, blogs are very interesting. The upswing is that the intentions of what people are looking for has changed.

Danah spent a great deal of time on this topic. She discussed the large problems created by blogs, particularly the social aspects of blogs and how blogs are changing social networks, social boundaries, and our inability to deal with these changes effectively. Issues of online privacy, and creating safe space online. Another interesting aspect of blogs, is people locating like-minded people and engaging in conversations about the given topic. In addition, the effect that blogs are having on intellectural property. Remixing, for example. Podcasting which is an offshoot of blogging in many ways is also reeking havoc on the intellectual property landscape (and I don’t mean this in a bad way). I would love to be able to DJ some of my favorite stuff in a podcast but getting the rights to do so for a reasonable cost seems nigh impossible. Also, being able to use copyrighted music to create multimedia which is compelling is an issue.

Another social facet of blogging that Danah discussed is the idea of blogging and issues of information privelege. Not everyone has universal access to information and how do we get people to useful information if they don’t have access to the copyrighted material.

Personal tirade
There is a great deal of talk about the value of education in this country and the importance of a democratic population being educated in order to make informed decision. However, at the same time we deny the significant portion of the population access to information that would allow people to make those decisions whether they be financial, medical, political, legal etc. Recent events like Hurricane Katrina have set a magnifying glass on top of this issue which has always been there.

At the blogger’s gathering last night several of us hit on this issues again but from a different angle. A librarian from New Orleans and I were talking about the ineffectiveness of traditionally media to meet the needs of those effected by the disaster. He talked about how a friend had walked through the neighborhood and took pictures of people’s houses and posted them on Flickr to let them know what had happened to their property. Additionally, people started blogs to record what had happened to friends and family. This type of information was certainly not being conveyed by the media. My perspective evacuating from Houston was very similar. Once I got to San Antonio I had no idea what was going on back home. Was the power out, was their flooding, when was it safe to come home? All these questions could not be answered by traditional media.

The bottom line is that blogs fill and important role that no other information source can. While they aren’t perfect they do have innate value and they are changing the way in which we need to think about information and communication.