There are a few posts/texts I encountered today and yesterday that I found interesting and would like to respond to but they are not related enough to tie together in a coherent post. I'll start with Scott Karp's post "Blogs are institutions..."

Scott points out that blogs are publications inherently separate from the bloggers who create them, entities with a separate identity. I think this is critical to realize especially for type 1 blogs which tend to resemble broadcast outlets. Where I disagree is in extending this to all blogs. As I've written about in the past, there are several elements that distinguish the process of blogging from any other sort of writing or medium. These elements include: the connection to the personal (ego), existence in a networked environment, the potential for participation, and the physical organization. It seems that most people simply define blogging based on this last element, the design/structure, rather than recognizing the interplay between all of them. In a type 3 network of blogs the personal connection and participation might outweigh the structural and networked environment aspects since the readership and blogroll will probably mirror a non-Web social network. When blogs become institutions, as Scott notes, it becomes more important than the individual blogger(s). In this light I might go so far as to say that when the blog overcomes the blogger, that it is no longer a blog at all. The ego behind the blog has become dissociated from the blogger. I see this personal connection element as one of the more important elements, so when it is reduced to such a degree, hasn't the blog developed into something very un-bloglike?

Stemming from this, we have to question, then, how much "blogjects" are actually blogs if they completely lack the connection to the personal. Is an Aibo blog a blog? That specific example does have a strong ego element behind it, but if solely a robotic dog is imitating the personal element of blog-writing, why is it not simply a periodically updated site?

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The second text I'd like to respond to is an article titled "Transmitting the Body in Online Interaction" in M/C Journal. I was referred to this article through the blog networked_performance.

The article is a strong analysis of online interaction but it has, from my perspective, some critical holes in it. The largest of these extends throughout the entire piece. The author approached the analysis from the concept that a singular identity, is created through online interaction. This is not to say that s/he does not recognize the potential to play different roles in different contexts, but s/he assumes that once one is through with "an" identity that it is finished, erased. While in our interactions via the Social Web, in these swarming media, we might shift which portion of our projected identity we are interacting with, the structure of the network and the potential for archival memory makes it impossible to shift identities like so many masks. In this environment we cannot take off our masks, they will always stick to us to an extent, be made apparent through our traces.

It is entirely correct and accurate to say that we create textual and visual signifiers for bodies in our interactions, and that different communities have different semiotic systems with in the larger network. It is dangerous and misleading, however, to imply that the Social Web is a place without memory. It is the multiple tendrils of our projected identities--pointing inward at an implied, but non-existent central point--that determine our interactions, that exist within the archival fragment, that create the emergent effects of this network structure. In considering online interaction we have to look at the social/cultural/technological functions of the whole rather than focusing on individual interactions.

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Thirdly, and actually related to the previous section, is an AttentionTrust post titled "Attention as Backup Identity." They propose that attention trackers could be used as a backup identity in the case of data loss through hardware/software failure. All I can say is that they are right, but that this doesn't exactly mean good things.