Someone I follow on twitter tweeted a link to “Beyond Blogs: How do scholars want to read and write?” and because I know that the person usually links to thought-provoking writing, I read it. Sure enough it was all I expected: well-edited writing on a subject of my interest. And I read it without clicking on the additional links to relevant writing on the issue, which the writer had diligently provided. I read it like many browsers would read articles on the Internet. I read, formulated an opinion, and even though it is an article of interest to me, I quickly moved on to the next thing. Now what does that say about me? Nothing much I hope, besides that I am usually too busy to read for more than a few minutes at a time, even when my interest is highly piqued.

I don’t know how long the typical browser / reader spends reading an internet article, or how often he even bothers to go back to an unfinished read, but I do know that on my blog, which tends to attract people interested in Caribbean authors and their works, a reader will typically spend 1-3 minutes reading at a time. The Internet writer writes, edits, links, revises; the Internet reader (more often than not) gives it a quick skim through, nods or frowns, maybe tweets it or links to it, and moves on. And such is the nature of the contemporary Internet reading beast. I’m sure most bloggers understand that, and have devised ways to work with the short-attention-spanned, often casual reader, but some bloggers insist on frustrating themselves with old notions of reading and writing, which they have brought to the world of internet writing and reading.

In the writer’s lament about the shortcomings of blogs, and in his proposal for more effective blogging, I found many instances where he seems to have a conflicting desire to be cutting-edge about approaches to scholarship, but can’t seem to reconcile that desire with a more classical classroom approach.

I wonder, does he even recognize the conflict?

Here are some of his comments (mine are in parentheses):

“Blogs are a received digital format that’s not necessarily well-suited to the rapid exchange of complex intellectual ideas.”
(His use of the word “intellectual” suggests a preconceived, controlled set of notions about what that might mean, and folks outside that particular definition of “intellectual” may show up on his public blog and unwittingly upset the speed and / or complexity of the exchange. So he’s right; blogs aren’t well-suited for that. He should try a classroom or some other controlled, physical gathering of like minds, where the “rapid exchange of complex intellectual ideas” can take place without interruption.)

“Blogs don’t aggregate conversation well.”
(Right, once again. The “aggregation” of opinions presumably deemed worthy of such an act–of aggregation–is an old classroom notion of how ideas should be exchanged or shared. The blog format, which (as he notes) tends to lose old posts, may have been created with the philosophy that the reader who happens on to the article or site arrives there with more or less of his own knowledge and can read and formulate his own coherent opinions about what he reads, without the aid of other opinionated readers. So aggregating opinions deemed “worthy” may not necessarily be of use to the reader in such a format.)

“What if we asked how we want to read and write rather than just making the best of the media we randomly inherit…?”
(And, if the media is to be a public one–like blogs, forums, websites–an important additional question would be, how do we factor in the role of the unidentified browser? Figuring out how we want (or like) to write, and how we (individually or as a member of a group) want or like to read may be relatively easy compared with figuring out how we want to be read by interested others outside the group, and the role they could play in developing ideas. It’s not the media; it’s the rather elitist, narrow-sighted approach to the media that seems to be at issue here.)

Note: Since I didn’t read the writer’s links to other opinions on the subject, I may well have repeated someone else’s opinions here. But this is not scholarly writing; I’m not obligated to read and fastidiously attribute. But if you are a beginning scholar reading this, you should do the right thing and read it all. Trust me, unless the writer removed an article or changed the original URL (nothing you could do about that), you’ll find enough old writing on the topic to keep your citations honest.

And to other readers / casual browsers, I see your nod, and your frown, and I’m nodding and frowning back.