Blogging Futures Prompt 2
Infrastructure
For the second prompt of the Blogging Futures course, we want to explore the question of infrastructure of blogs.
The discussion has shifted to thinking about how we assess the infrastructure of blogs. This entails not only the infrastructural framework of writing on the web but the mental framework behind it too.
So why is it important to focus on the infrastructure of blogs? Is there anything that can be done to the form of blogs themselves or does it all happen on the infrastructural level? What kind of mental frameworks do you see as being useful to moving ahead with writing on the web? What kind of infrastructural frameworks (blogchains, etc.) do you see as promising?
Along with these questions, there are some thoughts about this topic from the previous entries in the blogchain that could serve as prompts for your own reflection.
Happy writing!
So here’s a prompt, a call to action or a request for blogs – where’s the new infrastructure layer across blogs that helps the New Blogging scenius attract and retain a New Blog Reader scenius?
Could it be aggregators? (e.g. https://newmodels.io/ or https://indieweb.xyz/)
Could it be blogchains?
Could it be the republic of newsletters?
What do you think?
— Tom Critchlow, New Blogging 2 – Open Blogchains
We have a pretty powerful base set of tools for creating relationships, email, links, and to a certain extent social networks like twitter. What's missing is a mental framework for experimenting with social structures the way we experiment with content, and a set of models for thinking about creating doorways.
[...]
What's needed to enable it isn't a single tool or platform, but a shared culture and approach to designing little tiny social shims.
— Jared, Paradigms for blogging social infrastructure
But we can also identify blogging by something less tangible, more of a stance or ethos for written exploration. I tend to think of blogging as “thinking out loud”, a combination of personal essay, journaling, brainstorming and public memo [...] [F]ramed this way, by shared ethos, I think blogging can manifest in a many different shapes than we’re used to, and open up some potent possibilities for collaboration and dialogue.
Baroque, brutalist, Borgesian — let’s build some blogging megastructures.
— Brendan Schlagel, Proposal for Near-Future Blogging Megastructures
Having a useful mental framework should, like punk, enable everyone and anyone to create what Tom calls “Minimum Viable Structures” – ways that we can experiment with blogging infrastructure. It does not have to be technical. It does not have to be fully functional. It can be messy. The point is that we can iterate on it over time, using our mental framework as an inner compass to slowly navigate more towards true north.
I wonder how this ethos can be more fully developed.
— CJ Eller, Towards an ethos
I propose paradigm of metacognition where every action is a method or tool for thought. The model however has another layer. Since thought exists as patterns of neuronal activation, our thoughts are influenced not only by our actions, but also our internal and external environment. Writing might structure your thought in certain ways, but where you sit to write can either serve to inspire or distract from the process.
Back to blogging futures, I think that this blogging chain creates a synergy between processes of both writing and conversation. The distilled, structured thought of writing, combined with the collaborative thought of conversation. Perhaps new ideas can emerge from this conver-writing that would have been difficult or impossible to think through just conversation or writing alone.
— Azlen Elza, Writing as Distilled Thought