Re:Blogging

As is the case with almost everything I think, someone else has already said it better. And so I turn now to Professor Alan Jacobs of Wheaton for his critical analysis of "blogging". Writing at Christianity Today, he makes the following observations about the nature of a "blog".

There is no privacy: all conversations are utterly public. The arrogant, the ignorant, and the bullheaded constantly threaten to drown out the saintly, and for that matter the merely knowledgeable, or at least overwhelm them with sheer numbers. And the architecture of the blog (and its associated technologies like rss), with its constant emphasis on novelty, militates against leisurely conversations. It is no insult to the recent, but already cherished, institution of the blogosphere to say that blogs cannot do everything well. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought.

I hope to have more time to consider this in the future, but the Professor is certainly right about this. The short word is that blogging should not replace other habits that are more conducive to the contemplation of ideas. In the TV and internet age, it's tough to find any time to sit and seriously think. And if your goal in life is to be a saint, it is likely that that goal is difficult to reconcile with a habit of compulsive blogging.