Blogging

I had the privilege of attending the Inaugural Meeting of the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society last night in Manhattan. (Sue me, my family now leads a bi-coastal lifestyle.)

What a fantastic opportunity to see the community (aka society) that’s sprung up around this incredible blog in the flesh. Myself and a colleague from FM (Bill Brazell) manned the guest list, helping check people in, and, as attendees queued up, their enthusiasm was palpable.

No one knew quite what to expect, but it didn’t look like anyone was disappointed by the show. I mean, how often do you get a chance to meet the man upon which the “Rainman” character was based? And how often do you get to hear from the pioneering test pilot who helped develop the scientific principles behind NASA’s space walk gear? Interesting, and eclectic stuff. I was really happy to contribute, even a little bit, and it was fantastic to meet the Society’s founders in person. More to come, I’m sure.

[note: check out the coverage on Make]

Great news for community-oriented publishers from the California Supreme Court yesterday. In case you missed it, the court held that a Web site’s operator shouldn’t be held responsible for libelous content written by others that appears on that site. This just protects the status quo, of course, but should have bloggers and other custodians of free-wheeling discussion sites breathing a sigh of relief. (The Merc has a copy of the decision (PDF) online.)

Heard a really interesting story on NPR the other day about the roles blogs are playing in a protest at Gallaudet University, a liberal arts school for the deaf in Washington D.C. No doubt the growth of blogging in the deaf community has also helped the controversy reach many more ears through the mainstream media. (Protestors are speaking out against a new president set to take office in January.)

Some of my earliest experiences online, well, on BBSs, anyway, were courtesy of two blind co-workers of mine at Taping for the Blind in Houston. It might seem counter-intutive that a computer screen was liberating for these sight-impaired folks, but the digital format made for easy amplification and translation via text-to-speech technology. Yes, I know there are still many battles to be fought for accessiblity online, but it’s certainly better now than it used to be in those days (early ’90s).

The Emoboys. The Lonelygirls. The Proudparents. The Oldsters. Yes, they are the YouTubers, captured poignantly (and appropriately) in a video posted by Pete Blackshaw over at cgm. As he says, it’s great stuff for cultural anthropologists. And aren’t we all playing that role, to one extent or another, these days, as new media consumption patterns and cultural behaviors erupt right and left? Worth watching.

Funny piece by Lore Sjöberg in Wired News titled “The Ultimate Blog Post”.

One great graf: “Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you’re about as likely to find someone else interested in it. One popular technique for building readership is to send e-mail to more well-trafficked blogs offering to exchange links with them. One popular response from those blogs is to laugh derisively and hit the Delete button.”

The article goes on to lay out “ultimate” posts for a number of blogs, including Boing Boing, FARK, Slashdot, Kottke, Make, and Digg. Good stuff.