Blogging as an intellectual?

A couple of my friends and colleagues have asked me why I, or anyone, would blog as an effort in spreading intellectual ideas. It seems somewhat antithetical that the Internet, and the egocentric Blog movement, would possess any real key to creating a form of intellectual communitas.

It is a good point. However, the use of the blog is not really that much different from a combination, of sorts, of the millenia old practice of the academic society presenting ideas within a rhetorical mode and the centuries old practice of keeping a personal thought-diary or journal. It seems to me that the blog has the very real potential of reifying the word and written discourse as a way of self-expression.

Yes, not as many people write real letters or articles. No longer do the ideological broadsheets and pamphlets exist that allowed a wide range of individuals to express their thoughts and opinions on contemporary issues and disseminate them (and get punished for them).

There was another story on CNN this morning in which news organizations were questioning the new "fad" of political bloggers. This is not a fad. The method of communication might be different, but I feel that the drive and content are similar to early colonial authors such as Payne and Adams and the authors of the Federalist Papers. These were not functionaries of accredited new agencies. They were individuals with axes to grind. Granted, for the most part, the successful ones were privileged individuals who wanted to retain their wealth, but that is another story for another time.

The specific impetous for me to throw my hat in the ring comes from reading the transcript of a roundtable forum from early 2001 that was published in The Nation. In this article a number of threats and responses to the goals and challenges of the public academic intellectual are brought to light. One of the most hopeful comes from Steven Johnson who writes about the potentials of the Internet,

"The ability to center your intellectual life in all of its different appearances in your own 'presence' online, on the home page, so that you can actually have the equivalent of an author bio. Except that it's dynamically updated all the time, and there are links to every thing you're doing everywhere....The web gives you a way of rounding all those diverse kinds of experiences and ideads....the web is finally all about linking....And it also involves a commitment to real engagement with your audience that perhaps public intellectuals have talked a lot about in the past, but maybe not lived up to as much as they could have."

In an effort to connect things would encourage you to go and read this forum. Then feel free to share your thoughts here.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010212&s=forum