I, said the Fly

Who saw him die?

I, said the Fly

With my little eye,

I saw him die.

Cock Robin (nursery rhyme)

The Fly was lucky. My little eye isn’t doing too well. How come? Apparently the blogosphere has died and gone somewhere over the past few years, and I missed it. Completely. I did not see it die.

So what did I miss? Nicholas Carr gives a reasoned view of the demise of the blog in this post. Even though I don’t always agree with him, his is a must-read blog. Let me try and summarise what he says in the post:

  • Blogs are about two things, a style of writing and a set of tools.
  • If we concentrate on the style of writing, there’s been considerable change over the past few years.
  • The top blogs are now indistinguishable from mainstream news sites, down to landing page bloat and authorship by collections of professional writers.
  • Even if we include these collective pro-blogs, the actual number of blogs updated regularly is low, 7.4 million in the last 120 days and 1.5 million in the last week.
  • Different in style. Dominated by professionals. Indistinguishable from mainstream. High dormant rate.

Doesn’t sound too alive, does it?

I’m not so sure, I guess I see things differently.

Why do I say that? There are a number of reasons.

Growing irrelevance of the Technorati Top 100

I used to read a lot of people who were in the Technorati top 100. I don’t any more. Not because I’ve stopped reading them. But because they aren’t in the top 100 any more. Let’s look at what changed here. The people I used to read are still blogging. They haven’t stopped. So what has changed? What changed is that they stopped caring about their Technorati ranking. They were relaxed about changing their blog addresses, they blogged in more than one place, they blogged in more than one way. Rankings fell away.

Move towards aggregation

As the blogosphere was infiltrated by the mainstream, one of the tendencies I noticed was that a number of people that I used to read as individuals began to blog as groups. My guess is that it was a way to counter the attack of the mainstream. Many of the blogs in the top 100 are actually mainstream pseudoblogs; those that are authentic blogs are often multi-author blogs. The number of authentic blogs in the top 100 reduced as a result.

Reaction to trolls

As the blogosphere grew, so did the misuse of links. There were more and more instances of self-publicity through self-linking, trolling became more common, the ranking systems started getting gamed. One of the common reactions was to move away from “link love” and blogrolls and suchlike. That in turn affected rankings.

Growth in microblogging

As the blogosphere grew and began to get to Main Street, it started spawning other ways of blogging. Principal amongst this was Twitter, which some people see as microblogging. One thing’s for sure: Twitter sucked away a lot of the mini-posts people did in their blogs, which had two consequences. The average length of the blog post grew as a result; and the frequency of update of blogs fell away. That affected some of the statistics we are seeing.

People stopping blogging?

I’ve tried to think hard about all the people I read at the turn of the century, those I read when Technorati started ranking them (late 2002? early 2003?) , and those I read now. And you know something? I think I can come up with two names of people who aren’t posting as much now. Kathy Sierra. Clay Shirky. [And I am privileged to be able to say that in both cases, the conversation has continued. In person. And it probably wouldn’t have continued if I hadn’t continued to blog. Both of them have their reasons for changing their style and frequency of blogging, both of them have every right to those reasons. But their actions do not represent the death of blogging. Clay continues to do so via Here Comes Everybody. Kathy continues to be quiet, and has her reasons. We should respect them].

Maybe Nicholas Carr is right. Maybe all those who claim blogging is dead are right. I don’t know about that. But here’s what I think:

Most of the people who started blogging continue to blog, and that number is growing. It’s growing slowly as the blogosphere matures. There are a large number of dormant blogs, but that has always been the case. Always. There has been a change in the blogosphere when viewed through the lens of the Technorati 100, but that is because the ranking is irrelevant, not because people have stopped blogging. There has been an impact on size of post and frequency of update as a result of the growth of microblogging, but that should be seen as an extension of the blogosphere and not in competition with it. Twitter is part of the blogosphere.

I, said the Fly? I think not. The death of the blogosphere has more to do with the death of Mark Twain than that of Cock Robin.

some things continue to be broken

A week ago, Google reached a “landmark settlement” with authors and publishers. I saw the headline somewhere, bookmarked it, told myself I must read it later. And life carried on.

Today I started catching up on “back burner” stuff, which nowadays includes unread bookmarked material. And went to this press release.

I began to read. Authors, publishers, and Google reach landmark settlement. [Good news.] Copyright accord would make millions more books available online. [Even better.] Then I got into the small print, which I reproduce here:

If approved by the court, the agreement would provide:

  • More access to out-of-print books […. ]enabling readers in the US to search these works and preview them online
  • Additional ways to purchase copyrighted books [….] further expanding the electronic market for copyrighted books in the US [….]
  • Institutional subscriptions to millions of books online [….] offering a means for US colleges, universities and other organisations [….]
  • Free access from US libraries [….] at designated computers in US public and university libraries [….]
  • [….]

You see where it’s broken? Not Google’s fault. But it needs fixing.

Applying judo techniques to piracy

These are historic times, and the events of this particular “first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in a leap year” overshadowed everything else. There is change afoot, and powerful change. Despite all the hype, and despite the predicted sheer scale of the victory, I was amazed. And Obama’s acceptance speech was something else.

I was so taken up with the election that I missed this story:

MySpace and MTV plan to make money from pirates

Simply put, MySpace and MTV will convert the pirated material into vehicles for ads and into ads for the original material.

The logic appears to be something like this. Analyse material to confirm what it is and whether it has been pirated. If it has been pirated, then inject relevant ads into it along with links that connect to the original material.

In effect, use the power of the pirate to spread your business. And thereby fight piracy.

And that made me think. Why get so convoluted? Instead of doing away with pirates, why not do away with piracy? Digital material is intrinsically abundant; to do away with piracy, all that is needed is the removal of artificial scarcity. Then nothing is considered piracy. And everyone who wants to can become a distributor of ads or other services.

There is often some digital material at the heart of every social object. Social objects circulate, they pass from hand to hand. They can pass freely and without encumbrance, without let or hindrance. If they are allowed to.

Social objects get enriched as they move around, enriched with new information. This includes recommendations, the things that ads become when they grow up. If they grow up.

Maybe it is time to stop doing away with pirates and to start doing away with piracy. And to understand the power of social objects in that process.

Thinking about why I love poetry

There are many things I am grateful for, many people I am grateful to. I have been blessed in many ways.

One of the people I am grateful to is my father. And one of the things I am grateful to him for is the effort he made to ensure I had a love of poetry.

You see, I don’t remember him making any effort at all. Just conversation. He would quote snatches of poetry at random, leaving me with the (completely voluntary) task of looking the quotation up in Bartlett’s or in Stevenson’s, and following it up where appropriate with delving into relevant anthologies or collections.

He was aided and abetted in this by my uncle PK, whose style was completely different, larger than life in every way. Instead of the odd couplet or verse, PK would burst forth into song, an entire poem at a time, delivered as only he could. To this day I have not heard an Indian recite Burns the way he did; in fact I have not heard anyone visibly relish the act of spouting poetry as much as he did.

It’s only now that I realise what a privileged upbringing that was, to be in a household where Shakespeare was quoted daily, not just from the plays but from what the onlie begetter actually got; where hearing Herrick or Wordsworth or Tennyson or Browning or Dickinson or Coleridge or Dylan Thomas was considered normal; where the War Poets were loudly discussed over coffee and cigarettes, where Yeats was celebrated as joyously as Wodehouse. PG, despite not being a poet, was quoted at home regularly, interspersed with Carroll and Lear. And Ogden Nash. Besides Wodehouse, the only author I remember being quoted regularly was Rex Stout.

The teachers at school therefore had something to work with, particularly the brothers Vianna, Mr Redden and Mr Engineer. They taught us well.

And all this was overlaid with occasional references to poetry embedded in the Times crosswords and in the quiz leagues that formed an exhilarating part of my youth and adolescence. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon and John Lennon had their considerable influence as well, as did Bertie da Silva, a close friend and constant companion in my university years.

All this is why, today, I can spend time reading and enjoying the poetry of someone like Nick Laird. A complex and sometimes confusing array of influences conspiring to encourage the love of poetry in me.

I was delighted to see Use of Spies in the October issue of the Believer, there’s something about that poem I love. Can’t explain why, but I do.

Here’s an MP3 of Nick reciting the poem, in case you’re interested.

By the time I retire (which is now a handful of years away) I will have been involved in building a school. Of that I am certain. And every school day, I hope to walk to that school and spend an hour or two just talking to children about my love of words and language and poetry, showing them that love in conversation and anecdote and story.