In my opinion, a blog can be defined by two criteria; type of author and type of content.
If we start with the first one, the author, you will find three different kinds of blogs:
- The anonymous one characterized by not revealing significant personal information about the author. The blog do generally not display names of the people the author writes about and no personal images are added to the blog.
- The semi-anonymous one The author reveals some amount of information but not last name. At the same time the author is not too afraid of publishing information that might make it possible to identify her/him. Personal photos are used but if so, mostly of objects and or of themselves but with out showing their face.
- The public oneThe author states who s/he is, that this is his/her blog and do not mind publishing information about him/herself. Photos are regularly used and his/her picture is often displayed at the top of the page.
The second criteria, the content of the blog, can be divided as follow:
- Personal Diary like, own thoughts and stories from the authors’ life.
The personal blog can also be divided in two groups, those who writes mainly for strangers (those blogs are written by the anonymous author) or those who writes mainly for friends (the semi-anonymous or sometimes public, author).
- Interest The blog features posts about mainly one topic; fashion, cars, a music genre, a game, politics, travel etc. These blogs can sometimes be to some extent combined with a personal blog. Are usually semi-anonymous or public.
- Professional The content of the blog is written by someone who is (in many cases) paid for doing that or for promoting him/herself. This could be a journalist, politician, artist or sometimes a "normal" blogger, usually writing about a specific interest that has been so successful so s/he actually starts doing it as a job.
There is also the ver public self creating blogs, that becomes more homepages than blogs. For example tjuvlyssnat.se, konsumbloggen.se or overheardinny.com where the readers becomes the authors by contributing with their own material
With an increased number of readers, a blog often transfer from one genre to another, a semi-anonymous personal/interest blog might change to a public blog only focusing on the interest and might in the end become a professional blog when the amount of readers are very high.
The communities that exist around blogs are mostly to be find among the personal and interest blogs, specifically among the anonymous or semi-anonymous ones. These communities are as active and alive as those that are to be find on spaces that only exist for networking purposes. To blog is not only to write and to be read, it is to read others blogs, to comment, to receive comment and to answer them.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Friday, March 23, 2007
Swedish comedian performs in Second Life
While strolling around in Second Sweden yesterday I got to hear some interesting rumours; Swedish stand-up comedian Magnus Betnér are going to make an appearance in Second Life (actually in Second Sweden). No one knew anything exact but in today’s DN you can read everything about it. Apparently the date is set to 29 of April at 9.00 pm.
This is the second time in a few weeks that DN writes about Second Life. All of a sudden, Second Life is not anymore a place where bored computers nerds with no real life social skills could meet people, but an accepted phenomenon worth acknowledging.
This is the second time in a few weeks that DN writes about Second Life. All of a sudden, Second Life is not anymore a place where bored computers nerds with no real life social skills could meet people, but an accepted phenomenon worth acknowledging.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
What is Digital Culture (to me)?
To be able to define what digital culture is, we first have to establish what culture is. Collins English Dictionary (p. 181) states following:
Culture
1. the ideas, customs and art of a particular society
2. a particular civilization at a particular period
3. a developed understanding of the arts
So if we start out from that digital culture is culture, only digitalized, the definition should not be that difficult; all three definition above are applicable to digital culture. But with the complex and global world that the digital world is, it is not as simple anymore.
If we start with the arts, digital arts is more or less similar to traditional arts, methods have change but as soon as people start to consider something as art, it is art. As long as the conception “art” has existed, people have disputed what is and not is to be considered as art and in this sense, digital art should therefore be no different to traditional even if it itself is a part of digital culture.
But what about digital culture in the meaning of societies or civilizations? There is no doubt there are thousands societies and communities deriving from different digital phenomena. They have all their own ideas, customs and some of them are already in the past. Still, I would argue, there is not such a thing as one digital culture. Assuming all digital cultural occurrences are the same is like assuming all cultures over the world are the same. The behaviours of a digital community or practice, differs according to what it is and what it does, the users interest, the users cultural and national belonging and the history of how it arised. Therefore, we can not speak of one uniform digital culture, instead we can speak about different cultures sprung out of digital phenomena. They might have more or less things in common but every group is unique in some sense. The “ideas, customs and art” in Second Life for example is not comparable to communities founded around blogs or on a forum. Even within Second Life there are plenty of different societies and groups of people who’s behaviours and views of the world differs according to their cultural view. The wide conception “digital culture” consist of an enormous amount of things; everything from sending an email, logging on to MSN, making a blog entry, posting a message somewhere, entering SecondLife or joining a game. What they do have in common is that it is digitalized, communities that in some sense demand interaction between its members, a creation of selves and identities and something that seem to want to be parallel to, but instead becomes a part of, the physical world we live in.
In the same way as digital culture is a word collecting billions of cultures underneath it, it is also a part of our “real” culture of the 21st century. We are constantly affected of it and a part of it. It changes the way I handle my relations to people and it creates relations to people I have never, nor will ever, meet. It affects my life in such a fundamental way I do not even question it anymore. My daily routines and tasks are as much digital as lived and much of my life, personal and professional, are not taking place in a physical space.
Where there are people there is culture and digital culture is no exception
-it is only in a digital environment.
"Culture." 181. Collins English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Bath: CPI, 2003
Culture
1. the ideas, customs and art of a particular society
2. a particular civilization at a particular period
3. a developed understanding of the arts
So if we start out from that digital culture is culture, only digitalized, the definition should not be that difficult; all three definition above are applicable to digital culture. But with the complex and global world that the digital world is, it is not as simple anymore.
If we start with the arts, digital arts is more or less similar to traditional arts, methods have change but as soon as people start to consider something as art, it is art. As long as the conception “art” has existed, people have disputed what is and not is to be considered as art and in this sense, digital art should therefore be no different to traditional even if it itself is a part of digital culture.
But what about digital culture in the meaning of societies or civilizations? There is no doubt there are thousands societies and communities deriving from different digital phenomena. They have all their own ideas, customs and some of them are already in the past. Still, I would argue, there is not such a thing as one digital culture. Assuming all digital cultural occurrences are the same is like assuming all cultures over the world are the same. The behaviours of a digital community or practice, differs according to what it is and what it does, the users interest, the users cultural and national belonging and the history of how it arised. Therefore, we can not speak of one uniform digital culture, instead we can speak about different cultures sprung out of digital phenomena. They might have more or less things in common but every group is unique in some sense. The “ideas, customs and art” in Second Life for example is not comparable to communities founded around blogs or on a forum. Even within Second Life there are plenty of different societies and groups of people who’s behaviours and views of the world differs according to their cultural view. The wide conception “digital culture” consist of an enormous amount of things; everything from sending an email, logging on to MSN, making a blog entry, posting a message somewhere, entering SecondLife or joining a game. What they do have in common is that it is digitalized, communities that in some sense demand interaction between its members, a creation of selves and identities and something that seem to want to be parallel to, but instead becomes a part of, the physical world we live in.
In the same way as digital culture is a word collecting billions of cultures underneath it, it is also a part of our “real” culture of the 21st century. We are constantly affected of it and a part of it. It changes the way I handle my relations to people and it creates relations to people I have never, nor will ever, meet. It affects my life in such a fundamental way I do not even question it anymore. My daily routines and tasks are as much digital as lived and much of my life, personal and professional, are not taking place in a physical space.
Where there are people there is culture and digital culture is no exception
-it is only in a digital environment.
"Culture." 181. Collins English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Bath: CPI, 2003
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