Liquid Learning

Susan Sontag's journal writings

If blogs are a mongrel breed descended from the journal then the jottings discovered in the cache of notebooks left behind by Susan Sontag are illuminating to this genre of writing:

"Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself."

She continues:

"The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual daily life but rather - in many cases - offers alternatives to it."

And finally - after reading about herself in another's journal:

"... Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (social)functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal."

BlogScholar

An interesting project at Goldsmiths, University of London which was set up by Chris Bauer back in June 2005 and called BlogScholar http://www.blogscholar.com. Essentially an academic blogging portal and something I have been watching develop for a while. There is still some way to go before all of the categories  are populated to a level that might make this this a definitive site (or central hub) for filtered resource pointers yet perhaps this indicates the current dearth of academic blogs. It makes me wonder what the best tools are for organising and connecting resources ... Web 2.0 technologies and services provide a multitude of options for creating and sharing our personal knowledge networks ... in exciting ways that are still emerging and changing. Suprglu is one (take) of a new breed of meta-tools that exemplifies the gathering and sharing of multiple personal resources which has resonance with personal portfolio systems such as ELGG.  Managing our distributed information resources is not always a pleasant task and adding coherence and context is can present fundamental obstacles.