Firstsnow2006.JPGI’m working on another article on social media, and trying to make sense of the whole thing. This makes blogging a different experience: it becomes what anthropologists call “participant observation.” I’m a blogger, but I’m also thinking about the phenomenon of blogging and asking what it does, why it matters, and in fact whether it matters. Or it sheer self-indulgence? Another kind of social media is content-sharing software, such as Flickr (which creates the “badge” of photos you’ll see in the margin of this blog). But I like to put photos here, where I can tell you a bit about them. Here’s one of the first snowfall in the BerkshiresFullmoonGB.JPG.

And here’s a rather blurry one, taken without a flash, on the full moon over the town of Great Barrington. If you double-click the photo you’ll get a better view. Not great, I know, but perhaps it’ll give you a sense of this particular place on earth, and let you imagine walking down into those lighted buildings to have supper at Helsinki, a charming little restaurant where David and I where went last night and ate Scandinavian food while listening the the staff in the kitchen speak Spanish.

On a practical note, it’s a real nuisance to get photos into the blog. It’s easy enough using Zoundry BlogWriter, but to use Zoundry I have to disable and reconfigure different things. No wonder many people are put off using these technologies. And it isn’t just older people, either. I come across plenty of younger people who have no interest in the fiddling with codes and security settings. This is one of the great downfalls of things like social tagging and Wikipedia: the people who are most likely to contribute are those with the most time, not the most knowledge or acuteness.


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