e~mergent kiwi

blogs and books

i think books are different from blogs. it might just be me though. i have been blogging for a few years now. one of my categories was about church transition - doing emerging church stuff in an established setting. i was stunned to discover earlier this year that there are over 200,000 words in that blog category on my blog.

is there a place in our world for multiple approaches to communication?

A comment I made on Mark Berry's blog.

copyright and blogs: updated

In the last 24 hrs I have had two of my blogs posts copied in their entirety on someone else's blog. I'm not going to name them because this is not in any way a personal discussion. Rather it just got me thinking.

In a book world, you are allowed to "copy" 10% or a chapter from a book. Should there (is there?) such (voluntary) guidelines for the blog world?

Advantages of 100% copying
1. Ideas get spread. A person's thoughts get multiplied. That is part of the new media revoluation.
2. Ideas get read more widely. Every blog audience is unique and so the readership of an idea increased.
3. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, so 100% blog post reproduction is a huge compliment.

Disadvantages of 100% copying
1. Words lose context. A blogpost gains layers of meaning because it is shaped by an author and by the surrounding posts. Reproducing a blogpost loses that context. (This is also the reason why I don't use or like RSS feeds. They might be efficient but they strip context.)
2. The original author is more likely to be removed from any ensuing discussion (ie comments occur in another context and the original author is less likely to be aware).
3. Chinese whispers. You know that game you play where you form a line and pass a whisper down and laugh at how much it has changed. Similarly, reproducing a reproduction heightens the risk of not giving due credit or mixing up words from various bloggers.
4. Internet pollution. In an information rich world, should there be an ethical commitment to streamlining information rather than reproducing the same information?

I am not upset or anything. It just got me thinking. What do you think? What advantages and/or disadvantages do you see?

Updated based on comments:

I feel I need to clarify that I am not in any way accusing people of breaking copyright. I am just pondering the fact that blogs allow us to so easily do this. I could never, as say a weekly newspaper columnist, write something that said "I like what Taylor says: ..... and then print everything Taylor says." I would struggle to have a book published that consisted of great big long quotes from others.

Yet web technology makes cut and paste so easy. So we have a whole new way of publishing. It is are easier to cut and paste others words than to write your own. And I want to ask: what is the impact of this on the nature and understanding of writing and reading? Are we seeing less originality and more re-production? Do we, or don't we, like that impact? And only having pondered these first three; to ask, what are the legal implications.

comment denial

Sorry if you have been trying to leave a comment anytime in the last 4 days. I have been overzealous in my despamming settings. I trust it is fixed now.

theology of blogging

Some thoughts in process.

This blog is gift. As hobby it emerges from surplus; my time, creativity, thought and skill. A gift always costs. Every minute I blog is one less for family or for sipping a pinot.

Gift need not cost the recipient, but it costs the giver. Indeed if it has not cost, it is not gift but work.

It is the choice of a giver to give a gift. This means that consumerism is not necessarily theft of a surplus.

However, a consumer of a gift might note that while given freely, surplus is neither endless nor unlimited. By definition, for a surplus to remain a surplus requires replenishment. Such replenishment is uniquely contextual, dependant on the individual and their unique personality and makeup.

It might be financial,and so the chance to trade in Adense for the replenishment offering by a pinot or a new CD; it might be a comment that offers a new perspective; it might the encouragement of a story returned when an idea or resource has morphed into life; it might be a link or another blog offering creative resource; it might be a relational connection made, a network accessed; it might be hits on a traffic counter.

Method and mode of surplus replenishment may change over time.

Sustainability will depend on the sustainable replenishment and thus the ability to match gift, surplus and appropriately renumerated replenishment.

is blogging worth it?

Over my January holidays I contemplated shutting down this blog. I had started emergentkiwi to experiment with on-line community. In the early days of this blog (back in 2002-3) it felt like there was a lot of community; lots of comments, through which I learnt heaps.

Over the last year, it felt less and less like a community space. Visitor numbers tracked up, but the sense of interaction on-blog and through e-mail declined. At times I wondered if this was now a consumer space, rather than a community space. Did I need to change the way I posted in some way? It takes time and money to run a blog. I have always resisted the idea of advertising as alien to a "community" sight. But if more and more visitors are just consuming, why not?

Two weeks into my January holiday a parcel arrived, posted from the UK. With a card; thanking me for the blog and noting that I had made a post asking for input regarding spiritual practices that might help a cafe. Near 100 people had visited the post. Four had commented. I had found that depressing.

And a book, titled Church Cafes. Explored and Celebrated. (Order here). A really interesting survey of 100's of cafes around UK.

So I'm back blogging for another season. I'm still concerned about the balance between community and consumerism and still pondering the time and effort of a blog. But I'm feeling a little less "consumed." Thanks J. (you know who you are).

can't comment

I've had a number of emails saying people can't comment. So I've had a bit of a tinker and I think it's now fixed.

san diego

enjoying
- the fact that the bar man asked for my ID!
- taking a picture of the first person who I saw brought my book
- meeting blog and email names
- American hospitality

access

did any of you have trouble accessing my blog yesterday? i couldn't (so couldn't post), but thought it was problems with my computer. then a friend said emails to me were bouncing ...

media times they are a changing

Waiting for a take-away coffee today, I picked up a copy of a free magazine called the cityscape. The cover article concluded "For the full story, see" and pointed to the magazine url.

Normally print based media are very slow to adapt to internet technologies. Web use is the poor cousin. Articles are limited, wait listed or non-existent.

It's the first time I've seen print media used to point to web media. Watch out magazines, the times they are a changing.

when a blog becomes indulgent

Adam Clayton from U2 once described their album Passengers as indulgent. I took from the comment a sense that perhaps success had made them less hard on themselves and their music. They needed to learn again to be ruthless on themselves and their craft.

I have been blogging less over the last week, because I have been editing my book. A book with emergentYS/Zondervan goes through three edits; not just for grammer, but also for content and flow.

I have decided that a good editor is a gift. Hard at times, but a gift. Having to defend my work, having to read my work expressed in a slightly different way, being asked for a story here or more evidence there is a wonderful, wonderful experience.

So does blogging become the equivalent of U2's Passengers? Indulgent and asking me to be harder on myself and my words.

oops! Just realised that in the midst of internet joy, I turned off my comments function. I was wondering why you were all so quiet!! Sorry about that.

i love the internet

i just got sent 78 spam emails in the space of 3 minutes. isn't cyberspace a great place to be!

slow blog postings; crammed head

sorry - slow blogging period
book mss due to emergentYS this weekend
preaching sunday
preaching monday at a seminary graduation
student marking to do

There is no key .. yet

Lots of you have asked for the key and some of you might wonder why you have not yet had a key cut.

Please relax. There is no key yet. Correction. There is a physical key, but my philosophy has not yet allowed me to turn the key. I am still not convinced a key is the right way to go.

Never resign in the middle of a row.
Never take strong action in the middle of a reaction

So I am bidding my time, letting the days tick and normality return and the questions ponder. Current questions include
1. Can I be bothered running two blogs?
2. There must be a better way to protect my stuff than locking some of it away?
3. If I am a “real” Kingdom person, surely I should be glad if my stuff is borrowed. Should I not offer two articles to everyone who cut and pastes one?
4. What is “author” anyway? Am I not a postmodenist who believes the author is dead and the only authority is communal?
5. A blog takes a lot of energy. How can I create “re-energising blogging processes?
6. What is the point of a blog anyway?

bruised but

A blog break = no abuse from nameless punters ... no emails to wade thru ... no complex and ethical decisions about what to blog and what not to blog ... no feeling like I am a baby in the matrix energy factory, with nameless people sucking me dry.

I have really enjoyed the break and have been very tempted to keep enjoying it. I found out one of the people who emailed on my stuff was a person I had helped in cyber and that was more bruising that finding out it had happened in the first place.

But then, a blog break = no meeting you ... no expansion of my world ... no interesting comments that open my mind ... less public processing of God in my life ...

OK, OK, so I will return ... I will need a few more days for the bruising to die away and to put in place some lessons learnt.

At this stage I am working on 2 blogs: a publishable blog and a conversational blog.

One, the publishable blog, you can take what you want and use it to power your matrix.

The other, the conversational blog, well, if you are willing to sign up to tread carefully, speak clearly and take nothing with you, then I can throw you the keys to the front door of the conversational space. I keep your "email" promise on file and if you flog my stuff, I throw away your keys, or worse throw you to the lawyers. Sort of like a private dinner party where we all work together to enhance the conversation. We give energy and in exchange we go away richer.

You get the keys by requesting so in my publishable blog, which remains pretty much its usual self, just a bit lighter at times cos the real oil is in the conversational space where I can trust ya.

What do you think?

test

just playing with some possibilities. you should not be able to access this download. if you can, PLEASE, let me know.

Download file

Kiwi bloggers

Two new Kiwi bloggers who have survived the initial "post" and are now up and running regular. The other, the better, emergent kiwi is here. My friend Marion whom I am marrying in April, is here.

(No jokes about multiple partners please.)