PROCESS POST: Blogs & Digital Gardens
Week 5: October 10 - 16
Corey Doctorow’s Views on Blogs
In the article The Memex Method: When your Commonplace Book is a Public Database Corey Doctorow defines “ the blog as an annotated browser-history, like the traveler’s diaries my family kept on vacations, recording which hotels we stayed in and what they were like, where we dined and what we ate, which local attractions we visited and how we felt about them.”
Future Plans For My Blog
I like that quote, and it led me to think that I should include a resources section for my website to be sort of like a scrapbook of different resources that have helped me on this journey. Throughout the weeks, I have watched a few videos, read some articles, and listened to a few podcasts, among other things. I think it could be cool to corral all of them up in one place for my website visitors.
Digital Gardens
I also enjoy Tanya Basu’s idea of a digital garden which she defines as “creative reimaginings of blogs” only “more collage-like and artsy, in the vein of Myspace and Tumblr—less predictable and formatted than Facebook and Twitter.” If I had the coding skills, I would love to make this resources page look more like a bulletin board or a collage.
Accountability
Corey Doctorow also discusses how, “The act of making your log-file public requires a rigor that keeping personal notes does not. Writing for a notional audience — particularly an audience of strangers — demands a comprehensive account that I rarely muster when I’m taking notes for myself.”
This quote also resonated with me, and I think this website has helped me stay a lot more accountable. In the past, I have tried to improve my general health and wellness and have taken notes on my phone to track my progress. This tactic rarely worked because I had no one to hold me accountable, and my notes got messy sometimes. However, now that I have this website, where I have to post every week, it helps keep me more accountable. I feel more pressure to continue with the challenge so I do not disappoint my audience, even if my audience is only my professor and TA.
My Challenge to You
So, in my opinion, if you have a specific thing that you want to achieve or explore, whether it is learning photography or reading more, I would recommend creating a website to help you stay accountable. I feel like sharing our goals with friends and family is good, but there is something about documenting your progress on a website that really works well.
References
Doctorow, C. (2021, May 9). The Memex Method. Medium. https://doctorow.medium.com/the-memex-method-238c71f2fb46
Basu, T. (2020, September 3). Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/03/1007716/digital-gardens-let-you-cultivate-your-own-little-bit-of-the-internet/
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