http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/11174361

Leonard Sweet took me aback with his view of blogs in the above video.  He basically uses the same argument against blogs that most are doing of twitter recently.  He says that blogs have taken away our capability to carry on a sustained argument (he bemoans the “2 or 3 paragraph” argument).

Meanwhile,  when people started saying blogs were dead and microblogging such as what we see on Twitter is the new form,  I didn’t budge.   I use Twitter,  but not for any kind of effective conversation back and forth. Twitter is my news stream.  It’s almost completely taken over the function of my RSS News Reader.  But blogs ARE what I use to carry on and sustain arguments.

He also charges that blogs are NOT LITERARY.  I guess he doesn’t read much in the blogs of ACTUAL LITERARY bloggers.  Journalists blog.  I have blogged for over 8 years,  and I can write fairly well.  I’m not the writer Sweet is,  nor Jeff Jarvis or David Weinberger or Doc Searls,  but it seems to me that Sweet hasn’t read much in the circles of blogs written by professional writers.  And I don’t know how well he thinks such a charge is going to come off with an audience of church folks who are attending a meeting on “Social Media for Social Change”.  I can imagine there are more than just a few like me who hear that and say “Eh?”  ( a very non-literary response,  I suspect)

I think he has a severely limited experience of blogs and bloggers.  He could use some coaching on following some folks on Twitter who have a sense of “literary imagination” who also bring this to their blogs.  They are all over out there in that land of “blogaria” as he so disdainfully described his experience  of the blog world.

Let me stress again,  in the midst of all this disagreement,  that I like listening to Dr. Sweet.  I like reading what he has to say.  I follow his Twitter stream.  He is a major reason I logged on to the Social Media For Social Change webcast.  But I think he is being a bit too “left brain” in his assesment of blogs. And he is also being a bit too harsh on them considering that he lifts up the positives of being in an age where authority has  shifted.  (and yes,  he does also talk about the negatives…..but considering that recognition,  and the recognition of the “non-linear” and how  “the Gutenberg world” is so rational and linear.  All of that recognition would seem to bring one down on the side of a more positive view of blogging.  Blogging is such a shot in the arm for “subverting heirarchy”,  enabling and encouraging passion and “non-linearity” and “Right brain emotion and passion”.  If it expresses itself often through certain human channels as less than properly literary,  this is preferrable,  I would say,  to a “trained, proper, subservience to convention (which tends toward the “Gutenbergian”, left-brainish)

So, yeah;  there are plenty of blogs out there to “pick on” to sustain  a claim that blogs are not suited to sustained argument.  No,  I don’t think that’s the case at all.   I turn to my blog to present my views or express my outrage or my “Amen” and elaborate on WHY I feel that way.  Very RIGHT brain.  I TRY to do that in a somewhat well-trained,  well-written fashion.  I can ramble,  but I think I am fairly articulate in how I write.  And so I have a rather intense case of “Yeah, BUT…..”  on  this.  I’d be interested ,  as always,  to know what all of you think….and also have Dr. Sweet ‘s take on how I’ve argued this.