Blog feelings

Blog feelings
This blog exists. What are the reasons for its existence?
Attendance at a seminar on elearning at ESCE – acted as a trigger to thinking about creating a blog.
My thinking – which sometime may be of interest to someone – was as an initial feeling:-
§ Time consuming
§ Rubish-in, rubish-out
§ Not part of my life-style
§ Yet another theoretical, philosophising, list-making avoidance for doing something

During Beverly Trayner’s conversation I ‘suffered’ the light on the road to Damascus.
§ The speaker did not sit on the podium above, nor behind the board of director’s table
§ The speaker crossed the ‘gap’ between speaker and audience
§ The presentation slides did not require 20 20 eyesight, but called for ‘reflection’
§ But I remained wary

Enthusiasm in the English 18th century was an ‘ill-regulated religious emotion or speculation’ and my experience of some forms of Protestantism, nationalism and propaganda has lead me to fear the enthusiast.

Her talk with the audience did not seem to answer my fears.
§ Blogs, Web 2 was ‘time consuming’. Her own desktop carries the warning “No more than two hours”.
§ Web 2 was a change in ‘attitude’ – to one of openness, desire to communicate, to know what others are doing and to let them see your ‘favourites’, to trust and adopt a non-authoritarian peer assessment of knowledge.

My thinking after the talk was very practical.
§ A blog could help communication with a colleague
§ Some colleagues were trying some Web 2 procedures which require a blog
§ Curiosity killed the cat, thinking about it brought it back to life again

Little would be lost if I tried
But
§ Do I need to know what others are doing?
§ Do they – whoever they are – need to know what I am doing?
§ Would making one online friend or acquaintance compensate for some loss of privacy?
§ Could the Chinese secret service use the information to make my life more difficult?
And the most important feeling – as Web 1 or 2 is mainly graphic symbols having little body language, sound, smell or most important – touch, it is the reserve of the ‘users of words’.

So, what reasoning have I adopted that makes me feel that this ‘leap in the dark’ (Disraeli on the Tory Reform Bill http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Horse-with-the-Head-of-Disraeli-Takes-Leap-in-the-Dark-in-Punch-s-Satire-on-the-Reform-Bill-Posters_i1881428_.htm) might have value?
§ Some, even in the 18th century, considered the spread of sharing experience to be a counter to ‘enthusiasm’ – the Royal Society for example.
§ Some, in the 20th century, have considered ‘rationality’ to be a term dependent on context. My dog’s rationality leads her to wag her tail. My reaction is to consider her as a ‘friend’. But what is rational for her and me is certainly two different things.
§ With Web 2 I may be able to create my own front page of The Times (more an almanac in the words of Ben Schott’s Preface to Schott’s Almanac) with columns on 1st century Pompeii and 3rd century Caetobriga and nothing about Bologna.