Why I Blog! A curious mixture of reasons.
1. Original inspiration, my mate Andrew and I share a bottle of red (or two - hic) most Friday evenings and 3 years ago this led to us having a laugh at ourselves over the times we'd been really Gullible. So...we hit on the idea of writing a book called Gullibles Travels only to find out that we'd been beaten to the draw by at least seven other authors. The full story can be found in post 1 of the Gullibility Blog. Nevertheless we committed a few things to paper and they stayed in the hardrive unloved until April this year.
2. Now me, RR I work in Higher Education in a UK uni' in the faculty of Organisation & Management - Marketing subject Group, after many years working in the gambling industry (hey folks visit the Liberty Bell Restaurant in Reno its run by the grandchildren of Charles Fey who invented the very first slot machine and they do a great steak!) Well academic interest got me wanting to know more about this 'blogging lark' and dipping in to find out more 'the scales fell from my eyes' The whole web 2.0 thing was something that business academics were sort of oblivious too. In order to find out more I thought the only way to do was to get your 'laptop wet' and dive in.
3. A happy coincidence, and a hardrive of material I hit on the idea of the Gullibility blog which meant that Andy and I could publish without trying to win a publishing deal and I could learn about, widgets, monetizing, chickletizing, tagging, social networking, bottom up marketing, SEO's, etc etc etc. Then guess what - I got hooked - and just like my days in the gaming industry I'm checking the daily stats for hits and popularity ratings. A new flag on Feedburner and I'm down the pub!
4. The whole blogging thing is fascinating to me, the diversity, the ideas, the communications. And the big AND for me from an academic perspective (stop yawning at the back!) is the whole notion of 'authority' or 'authenticity' - how do we judge to good stuff from the bad? we don't need 'reputable' journals and filtered publications anymore.. so what is the truth?
5. This whole 'discern -ability' thing is what I'm following in blogging and curious to know exactly how we do this.
Move over 'because I said so', and hello 'listen to this as a possibility'
Happy Blogging Folks RR
This is a very interesting post, Sir, especially since it infers discernment or wisdom. Both terms are relevant and are generally qualified by the author for the reader so that both are somewhat on the same page of understanding.
ReplyDeleteOk, ok, ok, I just had to ask.
I will be sitting with my nose in the corner if anyone needs to find me. ~:o)
Geesh, did I say, 'Thank you'?
ReplyDeleteIf not, (((((thank you))))))
HELLO RR
ReplyDeleteI trust you are well
I possibly mentioned in a previous comment on your blog about The Culture of Real Virtuality, so I won't bore you with that, but it is quite pertinent to the whole Gullibility topic.
I often find that a certain reverence is given to the written word. Often my friends have damned me to the darkest depths of hell for cutting up a book for the purposes of theatre.
What I'm pointing out (And I'm No Psychologist) a certain level of gullibity can be attributed to the written word.
http://news.com.com/Study+Wikipedia+as+accurate+as+Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html
Mr McArthur of McArthur's Rant pointed me to this very interesting article, which points out that even the Encyclopedia Britannica which is seen as Gospel in terms of facts, has a number of mistakes in it.
This is something that scares me, because the free source of information we know as the internet that we base so much of our knowledge on is by no means a trust worthy source.