I suggested to Shelley that the reason her semantic web post didn’t appear on techmeme was because of blog churn (referring to her refactoring of her blogging across various sites) and not because of gender discrimination; she pointed out how I was wrong, and I stand corrected. But I think the concept of blog churn is still important: it’s hard work to figure out how to organize our blogging. Do we blog at one site or many, with or without other people, for ourselves or for other organizations? How do we divide up the various topics we want to write about across blogs? And what does that do to the reputation and rank we’ve built up? This is of more than theoretical interest to me right now, as I have just joined Om Malik’s Web Worker Daily as lead writer.
I want to rename “blog churn” as “blog flux” because churn sounds negative. Plus, blog flux ties into the ideas of Ancient Greece’s answer to the Buddha, Heraclitus. He said “everything flows and nothing stands still” and that is nowhere more true than in blogging.
Heraclitus also famously said that we never step into the same river twice. Or at least that’s what people think he said, if they think about him at all. What he really said was something like “We both step and do not step in the same rivers.” So while the river and flow is constantly changing, there’s still in some sense the same river underneath. As I navigate my own career transition and help my sisters to navigate theirs (one is an obstetrician in Boulder, one is a professor at Tulane, I am–to my great annoyance–the only one of three sans doctorate), I remind myself there’s no arrival at the destination only flux and change. Even in the flux, though, there is something enduring. For me, what endures is an endless fascination with technology, joy in the engagement with the smart people that technology attracts, and always, the possibility that I might make enough money to keep myself permanently in Seven jeans and benefit cosmetics.
I hope you’ll visit me at Web Worker Daily, providing your comments and emailing me topic ideas for what you’d like to discuss about next-generation work. Another way to join in the discussions is via the forums that Om introduced today. The idea of web-based work is more than just a fascination for me; I’m all about using web technology to connect productively with smart people, wherever they are. You can see my first post about paper to do lists there now.
I am aware that previously I pointed out Content’s Divorce from Advertising, and now I am working for an advertising supported site. How do I reconcile this? Well my pseudo-Buddhist beliefs make me think there’s almost always an alternate way to look at things: who knows what’s good or bad, right or wrong, true or not? I try not to get too tied up in thinking I have the ultimate answers, as I don’t believe there are any. I also see a difference between what might happen in the long run and what happens in the short and medium run. The short and medium term is where economic opportunities arise (plus, as Keynes said, “in the long run, we’re all dead”). So even if we’re headed for a world where everyone’s an artist and everyone produces creative work without advertising being wrapped around it, we’re clearly not there yet. Where we are is in a world of freely flowing Internet advertising dollars. I’m not sure how I’ll like swimming in that river, but I’m excited to give it a try.
18 Comments
Congrats, Anne. I look forward to following your stuff regardless of which river it is in
Holy crap: a Heraclitus reference! Good job.
He’s the best Greek of them all. I always think/wish he had a quote that went “all is fire,” but, sadly, none of the fragments are so concise.
Have fun on Web Worker Daily!
Thanks, Mathew, your comment was the first indication I had that this post made techmeme, since I know you use that to guide your news reading. Didn’t intend that at all, not that it matters, but this is just the sort of post that doesn’t fit the reigning paradigm there.
Cote’, my favorite of the ancient greeks is Parmenides. As I recall, his philosophy boils down to this: reality is a gigantic golden sphere. My memory may be faulty though–the ancient greek philosophy seminar I took so long ago was taught by a professor with the most soothing voice and I slept through most of the course.
“All is fire” that’s a good one too even if Heraclitus didn’t say it–maybe I’ll make that the Anne 2.1.6 tag line.
My favorite of the ancient Greeks was Aeschylus. He wrote a whole play cycle about Euripides called Eumenides. It’s the trouser tailoring cycle… Euripides, Eumenides. (Geddit? You-rippah dese, you menda dese… think of trousers…) ahh, fuhgeddaboutit.
Ah, it’s all Greek to me, really.
Sorry. I simply couldn’t resist. Y’know, Anne, it’s not that I mind you being smarter than I am; I’m just struggling to keep my head above water. I’m sort of an inverted Tantalus. 
Bad jokes aside, congratulations on landing the WWD gig. I think your Keynes reference hits it right on the head. In the long run… Unless Om asks you to compromise your integrity and write solely for the benefit of the advertisers (highly unlikely), there’s no shame in receiving compensation for your efforts. I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with in the new forum.
Just as long as you
I still don’t understand. So here is my understanding:
- Key members of “the community” gate who is linked to, and thus who gets a high rating.
- These members may have a bias against women, or may not.
This sums up to a system that biases against women. I guess technically the system reflects people, and in that way, yes it does bias against women as much as the members do.
Considering our tools, techorati, google, etc use links to determine who is more interesting. If the underlying data is biased against women (men wont link to women’s blog for example), then how is the technology supposed to compensate?
It seems to me the solution is to develop gender-neutral extremely strong (ideally super-human level) AI that can come up with the techorati or google pagerank without relying on links.
Also, I never read techmeme. But I am happy to note my new blog is showing up high in google ratings for various things because I got linked from a very popular site. For example if you search for ‘mindstorms universal binary’ my blog posting trashing Lego is #1. I think it’s because I got linked from the joy of tech. Not 100% though.
Hey I think it’s a great opportunity. Best of luck to you and I’ll be looking for you.
Actually, Anne, I’m pretty sure I found it through my feed reader rather than Techmeme, since I’m subscribed to your feed.
That’s great news, Anne. Nice to see your thoughtful writing recognized.
coolness. i have been wondering about a related concept i am loosely thinking about as community grazing or community dipping. our feed subscriptions are of course very loosely coupled and we will dip in and out of different communities and knowledge centers as we work on differnt things. I am pretty sure OPML has a role here.
Mathew: oops, sorry, my mistake! Glad to know you’re subscribed, however you get here is fine by me
Ryan - the issue I’ve been exploring lately is that women tend to blog in a different way than men, and the way men blog is the way that techmeme grants authority to. That is, blogging about a single subject without mixing in personal topics, linking extensively to bloggers with high reputation, and blogging consistently over time. Of course that’s just a generalization.
This came up in Shelley’s comment threads: does one try to change society or try to change technology? Shelley suggested it might be easier to change technology. I suggested back that neither was likely to change.
In it all, I try to remember that it’s not clear who has it better or worse, women or men. I have a lot of freedom as a woman that men aren’t granted. I can move in and out of the workforce without people questioning it. I don’t feel pressured to prove myself through my career (well, not as much as I assume men feel pressured, anyway). I can be whatever I want: venture capitalist, nurse, software developer, teacher, whereas men are dissuaded from typically female professions.
I don’t know how you do pagerank without links. But one place to start looking would be amongst mommybloggers, because they don’t link like tech bloggers but there are definitely ways to figure out who’s influential… maybe comments, or identifying topics flowing through that community, or I don’t know what.
Do Lego Mindstorms suck? I was thinking of that for my ten-year-old. I will have to search on “mindstorms universal binary”!
James, you’re right there’s got to be a better way to dip in and out of communities and OPML must be part of that. I personally am very interested in links across communities and would like to know how I could dip into one community then another and then see how they are related.
Congratulations!
OPML will probably be a part of that, but I suspect that if-and-when it gains enough traction of that sort it will have to be reinvented as an actual XML format to ease all sorts of pain.
Sometimes worse isn’t better. Sometimes worse is worse.
You don’t need to link to the high-traffic folks (or have them link to you) or talk about what THEY find important in order to build an audience (and rank). It’s certainly possible to have a very high page/Technorati rank one non-A-lister reader/linker at a time.
While there may be shortcuts to “popularity” or rank, and that it’s possible to get readers just by being “one of the guys”, it is JUST as possible to get readers by putting them first, whether you have boobs or not. And you don’t need to be on any A-list radar to do it.
Thankfully, it’s a big world out there, and possible–even for a tech bloger–to have thousands of smart, authentic readers, 99% of whom might assume that Doc Searls is a medical site and TechCrunch a breakfast cereal for geeks.
My opinion (and granted–I have ONLY my personal experience here so it’s just that–an opinion)is that we ought to stop granting these guys way more power than they deserve–or actually have. Seriously… what would happen if all these endless conversations the non-A-listers have about the A-list/gatekeepers just dried up? We call it an echo chamber, but then we keep amplifying and boosting the signal.
Kathy - talking about it in terms of the A-list/non A-list might obscure that this is more about being part of the conversation than about who’s important and who’s not. Yes, we can go build our own successful blogs and communication outlets and it doesn’t have to be part of certain tech conversations. Sometimes though, the interesting conversations are facilitated by sites like techmeme and it matters whether our blog posts show up there or not and are linked by influential people or not. It’s not just about being high ranking or having a big audience.
I’m all for deep-sixing the conversations about A list gatekeepers, but I want to keep talking and thinking about how we ensure that those who want to be part of the conversation and have ideas to add are encouraged and welcomed.
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