Full Circle Associates

Michael Feldstein chimes in on Denham's post, noted in the previous entry. I like the suggestions that are emerging in this interplay, thus want to capture much of it directly.

Blogging as Parallel Play

This post is an illustration of why Denham Gray is right in his position thatthe blog is not the be-all and end-all to online purposeful conversation (e.g., learning communities, communities of practice, etc.). There are lots of great points in this post, but he gets to the heart of the matter near the end:

A cursory look shows little sustained turntaking, blog writers seldom reply directly to comments in their own blogs and themes ‘die’ quickly as individual writers move on to the next big item. Bloggers offer opinions rather than ask questions - inquiry and exploration are essential ingredients in knowledge formation.

One of the reasons is the very nature of the format. Responding here to Denham’s post on my own blog, I am obliged to address my regular readership primarily. If I addressed Denham directly, it would sound a bit weird. The context of my blog is an existing converation between me and my readership, of which the author of the post to which I am responding may or may not be a member. Rather than entering into a conversation with him, I am simply quoting him in the conversation that is already in progress (or, perhaps, the monologue that is already in progress). In contrast, were I to post a comment on Denham’s site, it would be weird for me not to respond directly (e.g., “I agree with you completely, Denham."). I would have entered his virtual parlor, so to speak.

While conversations can (and occasionally do) occur over trackback, from what I can see they (a) usually don’t last very long, (b) are very difficult to reliably stimulate/cultivate, and (c) rarely support sustained exchanges between two or three conversants, even when they do get hot. “Conversation” through blog strikes me a bit like parallel play in toddlers. We don’t blog with or to each other; we blog next to each other. Sometimes I pick up what you do in my play, and occasionally the kid next to me may, in turn, pick up on what I did. But we’re not primarily engaging each other.

On the other hand, this lack of direct engagement may be precisely one of the features that make blogs work. To begin with, I don’t need to follow social conventions and respond within the bounds of what Denham wrote. I am free to go off on a long tangent, covering whatever his post has triggered in my thought process rather than whatever I feel that I have to say in direct response to him. Second, if I’m not entirely comfortable with direct conversation, then I can feel safe within the intimacy of my blog/diary and choose not to look around to see what other people are saying in response to me. (In my blog, I get to decide whether I want to allow comments or trackbacks.) This can be liberating and valuable.

In an ideal world, you have both blogs and discussion boards. For example, in an online learning class, I’d like to implement a “trackforward” feature, where you can selectively pull an entire blog post (presumably by RSS) directly into a discussion thread, taking the conversation out of blogland (and off of the home turf of the original blogger) and into a common sandbox where everybody is invited for supervised play together.