Late developer

Starting a new blog in 2009 seems like a pretty futile thing to do. There are literally hundreds of thousands of dormant blogs out there – including a couple of my own. But I have to admit to not really “getting” blogs until quite recently. This will seem very weird if you know me. I was well ahead of the curve for online culture, taking a course online in 1991 (in philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City), reading Mondo 2000 and Wired US since issue one around the same time, and now in my fourteenth year as a technology journalist.

This is far from my first blog, too. I tried to create one about digital video, which died after about three posts and no longer exists. Another was entirely personal, but very self-promotional. That one hasn’t been much more productive, although I haven’t deleted it yet. My most successful blog is my collection of satirical fake news stories, Tehwinquirer.net, most of which came from my regular spot in Custom PC magazine. I ran out of steam on it because I ran out of steam with the magazine articles. I may go back to that one, although The Onion does it so much better and with a seriously huge budget.

So now we have Mediology, a rather pretentious and pseudo-scientific title. Maybe I should clear that one up straight away. Mediology is a particular strain of cultural theory which focuses on how ideas are transmitted across society and through time, and is usually attributed to a somewhat obscure French academic by the name of Regis Debray. I like the spirit of his endeavour, and I like the name given to his theory, because it sounds like a more serious area of research than “media studies”. But my focus, as it has been for the last couple of decades, will be on how digital technology translates itself into contemporary, hyper-mediated culture.

What I have realised about blogs, rather late (and thanks to teaching an online class on Geert Lovink's book Zero Comments at the European Graduate School) , is that they are not a democratic form of publishing, which could be your own little magazine and maybe even make you a bit of money. The chances of making money are extremely slim. Only a handful of blogs are financially successful, and even fewer earn enough for their contributors to work on them full time. Look at what has happened to Shiny Media here in the UK recently. One of the best home-grown blogs we have, and still not profitable enough to be the publishing revolution originally intended.

Nevertheless, blogs can be a valid business. They can be all kinds of things. But mostly what they are is an outlet for thoughts, like a diary you deliberately leave around hoping someone will get nosy and read. They are part of the burgeoning surveillance culture we are building for ourselves, alongside the self-imposed voyeurism of social networks like Facebook and the millions of cameras invading our cities for our “safety and wellbeing”. But there’s no guarantee anyone will bother to read them. In other words, they’re written primarily for ourselves, and if other people read them that’s a secondary bonus.

I’m writing this blog, therefore, to work through some of my own thoughts. The main focus will be ideas for a book I am currently labouring on, bringing together research over my whole career and in particular from the courses I teach at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication and experiences producing videos for TrustedReviews. The book is intended to trace the rise of online video distribution, placing it in historical context with TV broadcasting, film, and Internet technology. Massive change is already underway, and we’re still only at the beginning.

Let’s see if I can keep this one going.