Learning by Performing

Blogging is anything but a one-way medium. It's a multi-way, raucous network of conversations. Some will just lurk, read, and absorb but others will be moved to write a response in your comments or on their own blog. The sphere of chatter allows one person's thoughts to feed into all the others. We're all watching each other. We're all performing for each other. My friend Lalarene's question "Is blogging a world of voyeurism or exhibitionism?" sets up a false dichotomy. The answer when it comes to most new technologies is yes and yes, an additive world of multiplicity and choice. Look out onto the millions of connected individuals, each only a random google away from peering through the window you've opened to your brain. Welcome to the global stage where you're both actor and audience.

The public conversation allows everyday people to produce and share their own digital culture, tinkering with ideas like with a car, adding a little horsepower to a puttering argument, painting flames on an underappreciated classic. All those parts we leave lying around in our heads, a stunning insight after that third cup of coffee, a rant festering under intimidation and rules, can come out:

Blogging...blurs the distinction between the private and the public....by doing both private and public communication simultaneously, you can save both time and effort, and that might make it economical to engage in forms of communication with oneself and with others that would previously not have been possible.

Our narcissism fools us into putting those nascent, half-formed conversations out into the world: "Hell somebody'll get a kick out of this, even if it's just my mom." Knowing how much we like watching others, we get off on the hope others might watch us.