Blogging and Writing: is there a difference?
Image via Wikipedia The social networking merry-go-round continues turning. It’s not all fun and games and party and let’s all wear hats on Seesmic today type stuff … though that’s fun too. There are more than enough engaging conversationalists and provocateurs out there with something to contribute to the hive and to keep us all ticking over, thinking, responding in words, images and sounds.
The other night I responded to Terry Freedman’s video post on Seesmic. He wanted to know how teachers were using Seesmic. Here’s the thread: Terry’s to me and mine to him with a link to a blog post I’d written a while back.
Terry’s a UK-based writer who’s been commissioned to go beyond the chatter and to do some research on the way we’re communicating on and offline these days. He’s keen to get some responses from users with a point of view to share. Here’s the link with more details.
By the way Terry got back to me via Facebook with this request to pass it on. This blog post is going to find its way to my FriendFeed, and via that to a whole lot of other social networks and friends of friends … and so the message goes on its merry viral way.
Anyhow please help Terry out or post your response here if you’d like. I’m sure he’ll get it either way.
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Sep 2, 2008 at 5:05 AM /
Kia ora Kate!
A most interesting take you gave of the use of this technology. No Kate, I won't record a video comment, not that I'm in any way opposed to that new technology.
Y'know, it's very postmodern, this video comment business. Jaques Derrida would be smiling at the exploration that's going on right now. But something you mentioned about the whole media thing, and the word, I mean the written word, caught my ear.
In many ways the written word is a metaphor, as you and I have discussed before. That can provide a genuine barrier to communication. But the video comment cannot easily permit the commenter to annotate what is being spoken about the way I have done in the sentence at the start of this paragraph. In this way, the video comment would not permit another 'reader' to easily understand the reference that I may even have given cursorily in the video comment to our previous conversation on the word as a metaphor.
For all that I can see that Derrida's idea permitted the speaker to cut to the chase, I wonder about the use of these other, most powerful attributes of the human mind, the imagination and ability to reflect given enough time to do this effectively (not that I think one can't do some of these when 'reading' a video comment).
Writing, for me, provides a reflecting tool in itself. What I say when I'm writing might be subtly different to how I might say it in a video comment. Who is to judge which of these methods of communication would convey the most expressive meaning?
Derrida might have argued that the video comment would be the way to go. I would argue that the video may provide distractions that conveyed other things, such as facial expression, tone of voice (and even body language, if you are warmed to that sort of thing). And Derrida might have pounced on that and used it as a prime reason for using the video comment in the first place.
There is a debate going on at the moment about the merits of learning styles. I suspect that some of the factors that may be seen to be involved in all this would be pertinent to what we are discussing here too. Does the video switch you on? Does someone talking directly to you stimulate your interest in what's being said (more than a written comment about the same)? For sure, if the reader/listener is interested, then it may be logical to assume that the communication would be more effective.
The fact is, they are totally different media, as different as a series of still pictures is from the video shoot from which it may have been taken. To argue that one is better than the other in conveying meaning comes down to aesthetics, steeped in the realm of the creative interpreter. But if interpretation is a major player here, we are talking about quite a different aspect of communication.
Ka kite
from Middle-earth