On Analog Blog reactions
I got some good feedbacks [1][2][3][4]; I got some critics [1][2]; but all are constructive. It’s exactly why I love blogging: it stimulate communications and debates. This post has one purpose: clarify my previous post on Analog Blog.
What I described is a way to link thoughts, ideas and information together. I tried to use the blog concept with papers notes (notebooks, journal, diary; anything that is made of paper) and writing to know if the concepts can be used for this purpose. So, using Moleskines to do my demonstration was a fantasy, nothing much.
If you think that the idea is crazy then it’s your choice and I respect it. But try to tell this to an archivist or an historian. I also can give you a challenge: try to find a specific information in your university courses notes. I personally have over 1500 handwritten sheets, containing many type of information, in around 30 file cabinets. It’s virtually impossible to find anything in a reasonable time without any classification system (and I’m not talking of my 2500 printed sheets of all kinds). I recently talked with a guy that done a master in history. He had a fantastic archiving system to class his reading and to easily recover information in his sources. It was far more crazy that this little “analog blog” system. Was he crazy? Certainly not; it was more than essential for his work.
Yeah computers revolutionize the way we work today. Personal computers are one of the most famous inventions of the 20e century. Personally I never used my laptop in a course. It just doesn’t do the job for me. When I looked at my fellows with their laptops, I never saw them using it for the course but to chat and read forums posts.
I also want to answer to this blogger (thank for your post, it was relevant)
“This strikes me as obviously silly. A blog is, and to be a blog pretty much has to be, a hypertext document displayed on a computer with an internet connection.
The connection is the key to a blog, allowing you to surf away from the blog using its links, and then to surf away from those links, using theirs. The possibility of a non–self–referential, chaotic surf. When you write, however creatively, in a notebook, what you have is — a notebook. Repeat: a notebook. Not a blog. A notebook. Lots of paper? Writing? Hard covers? No USB port? Ah yes, that’ll be a notebook.”
Who say that a link, is necessary an HTML hyperlink on internet? A link is basically a relation between two things. It can be two websites, but it can also be two trains’ stations, two ideas, two people and two airports. All these associations are links. There are systems in place to use these links. It can be a social network, an airport fly system or the internet. Why do I need an internet connection to surf from link to link? Blog is nothing much then a way to display information. The links and the information contained in them are supported by other technologies, mostly derived from XML. A blog is nothing more than this… a way to present information. It’s dull doesn’t it? But the concept of blog, not the electronic implementation we know today, is really more then this. I’ll refer you to this post; read the linked article and you’ll understand a little more on what I want to say about blog’s concept. You need to see distinction between Blogs and the concept of Blogs; they are two things.
It was a little clarification on the purpose of my Analog Blog post.
Max
January 29, 2005 — 4:14 pm
Perypathetic does not catch the meaning of your idea: everybody knows what a blog is and what a notebook is. The example of your friend who has done a master in history you made is enough, to me. The most important feature of blogs, in my very humble opinion, are not hyperlinks (simply because any web site does it), but their power in sharing informations and thoughts all over the world, with anybody, everywhere, without the intermediation of a structured organization (like a newspaper or an enterprise like for example Yahoo!): a simple person talks to other people instantaneously and directly, and they can easily comment, end of the story. So, analog blogs could be more similar to weblogs if I, after writing a page of my Moleskine or another notebook, lend it to another person, who is free to read and eventually comment directly on paper what I wrote and he does the same to me. Bye Max
Fred
January 29, 2005 — 4:14 pm
Hello Max! Yeah, comments are in the center of blog’s initial concept (http://www.roell.net/publikationen/distributedkm.shtml). Your allusion to moleskine sharing let me think about the Wandering Moleskine Project of Mr. Frasco (http://www.moleskinerie.com/2004/10/the_wandering_m_1.html) So, I like comments like the one of Perypathetic. It forces me to think about what I write and how to write things to be understandable. It’s a really good exercise and I thank him for this. Later Max, Salutations, Fred
Jerry
February 2, 2005 — 4:15 pm
Thanks for a stimulating post Fred – I doubt i’d ever be that organised but you have come up with a good approach for cross-referencing random collections of thoughts in notebooks – especially those in the wonderful Moleskines ๐ As a participant in the Wandering Moleskine Project I found the concept of linking the online with the offline fascinating! cheers Jerry
Fred
February 2, 2005 — 4:15 pm
Hello Jerry! Thank for the kind words. The Wandering Moleskine is a really interesting projet! Mr. Frasco had a beautiful idea. For them who don’t know what the project is about: http://www.moleskinerie.com/2004/10/the_wandering_m_1.html Salutations, Fred