Slashdot Mirror
William Gibson on Blogging
The Ape With No Name writes "With Pattern Recognition now out, Gibson talks to the Guardian about blogging, which ones he's looking at and why he may have to quit blogging himself. He's quoted as saying '...if I'm ever going to write another book, I'm going to have to quit doing my blog as I have a hunch it interferes with the ecology of being a novelist.'"
Could going back to the stream of consciousness style actually screw you up when trying to write a novel??
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
is too much Amateur Philosophy.
There was an early review of Pattern Recognition in one of the UK broadsheets where the (female, as it happens) reviewer was complaining that she didn't like it, didn't understand it, and it was unfair to expect anyone to understand what 'steganography' was. She couldn't go and find a dictionary?
:)
I'm really looking forward to reading it, when I can find someone to borrow it off
Honestly, I could not finish reading Neuromancer. It just got too bogged down in manufactored terms "...he jammed the simstick down as he entered..." and I just got totally disinterested. There was manufactured term after term used without explanation and the context didn't help much.
His most recent novel (Pattern Recognition) was MUCH more readable but it took such a goofy and unexpected turn at the end, I again lost interest. The first 5/6 of the book was good though.
...but the internet in general. His fav sites, his thoughts on the blogging phenomenon, even googling, while we're at it.
In fact, the gist of the article is about sites he likes and visits often...
Err, and it's not even an article per se... shouldn't this be categorized under Interviews instead?
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
William Gibson's blog is located here: http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp
At first I considered a blog as somekind of diary people would keep online. The main reason people would read blogs was inspired by some kind of voyeurism. Nowadays most blogs are just a view on todays (or yesterdays) news. People nowadays read blogs to read the headlines and possibly different opinions .
;-)
I've once started a blog myself. Didn't last too long. The process of starting on including installing etc. was more fun to me than writing in it every day
/(bb|[^b]{2})/
It's not Gibson's fault, but that article was useless. Strafor, cnn, bbc, google ... wow, you've opened my mind to some new sites, Guardian! And as for Gibson's 'insights'into blogging ... . I imagine that a much more interesting interview was left on tape.
Actually, one thing I like about Gibson's style is how he uses invented terms - some you can guess from their morphology what they mean, others you can't.
So you form an idea of what each word seems to mean out of the context - like you do when you hear a novel word.
Finally most if not all of the new terms are explained a little while after they are first used, giving an interesting experience of how your deduced meaning matches the intended one.
...is simply being able to remember your goal.
Blogging is the antithesis of goal driven composition, and it's about time this was understood.
Aren't blogs just online teenage girl-type diaries to which the key has been given to everyone on the planet that has web access?
And why is it that almost all of them use the same non-text-resizeable template, rendering words to display about the size of the period that ends this sentence.
I can get a google search with porn turned off; why can't I get blogs turned off too?
Here's a summary, stripped of the verbiage:
Is there an art to blogging?
A vague question and I'll give you an equally vague answer with a lot of buzzwords thrown in. And oh, while I'm at it, I think I'll say something about my book. "interferes with the ecology of being a novelist".
Yeah right. Whatever.
What constitutes a good blog?
No idea. When the war broke out blogging became popular.
What a relevant answer!
Do you follow many weblogs?
Just one, the agonist.
I guess it suits his style because, as he admits, it is content-free, being just the headlines of major news sites.
Is brevity the key to good internet communication? :-(
----------
My parser core-dumped when I tried to understand the answer
So is Google officially a verb now?
In my book "Pattern recogntion", I used google as a verb. Inserts totally pointless link to wiktionary.
Yeah, I was wondering how he'd let three whole questions pass without referring to his book.
Has it usurped all other search engines for you?
Actually it has and I hadn't really thought about that.
Any other favourite sites?
CNN, BBC, eBay.
Wow, I've got to check these out. How come I'd never heard of them before?
Do you see the net as becoming more corporate?
I'm totally jealous about people using the net as a medium to share information, with no strings attached! Everybody should me trying their damnedest to make as much money of the 'net as possible, like me!
I think this is too broad of a generalization. Sure some blogs are the typical, "what I did today" or "pictures of my cat" but some blogs are informative and can reveal things deep in a person's soul that you would never realize. Sometimes there is something therapeutic about letting your thoughts and emotions flow even if it's just strangers reading them.
rk
Rangers Lead the Way!
Does blogging aversely affect the professional writer's writing? The Guardian interview touches on an important question, but only briefly - this is one that should probably be tackled by a team of researchers. When I started up a simple blog-on-a-Wiki last December, I was a bit plagued by a similar question:
Why would writers write in their free time?
For me, as long as I can get away with taking one or even two week breaks from the blog, it is not a problem. "Write when you need to, blog when you can," is about where I find myself at the moment.
But, to tell the truth, I couldn't handle doing boooring things for good pay. Hell, I can't even sell my soul properly. :-(
This is a bit too personal, so I'll be an anon coward.
I am supposed to writing a ten page history paper right now, but no, what am I doing, posting on Slashdot instead. Blogging, posting to forums, watching Bill O'Reilly just to get angry, they are all more interesting distractions than writing a book or a paper because they are easier and don't require as much energy. If you get all your emotion out on the little stuff, you have nothing left for the book.
*yawn*
The kind of article/interview that would put anyone off Gibson forever. I'm so glad i just finished reading the brilliant Virtual Light trilogy, before finding out that he visits bbc, cnn and google. If those were the most interesting sites he could think of, it probably means he sticks to surfing pr0n only.
if I'm ever going to write another book, I'm going to have to quit doing my blog as I have a hunch it interferes with the ecology of being a novelist
Personally I found this pretentious bollox. Smacks more of an author trying to cash in on the current albeit dying fad of blogging to help promote his new book.
Newsflash William. Writing juvenile gibberish on a web page is not a form of higher art. Stick to the novels.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
--TRR
He mentioned this before at least at the book signing in Birmingham if not before then too.
He said it's difficult because the 'blog provides an outlet for your thoughts and material, it doesn't have chance to accumulate.
So he doesn't 'blog when he is writing, that gives him chance to fill a store of thought enough to fill a book.
Don't blame me - this
I've frequently sat down to compose something with a specific goal in mind and then post it on my blog.
My Journal
Yes, and Slashdot posters are entirely made up of 13 year old Unix hackers who can't type Microsoft without the dollar sign.
Alternatively, it's just possible that anyone can keep an online journal. Or post on Slashdot. Or use IRC. Or do whatever they like.
My Journal
One can blog just to get stuff out to the public, and get a bit of a response. Gibson said during a reading that he felt that blogging was too fun; it didn't feel like work. Even interracting to two or three dozen people in a blog struck him as a time sink.
Neil Gaiman is writing very conversationally, responding to questions. (In verifying the address, I noticed he has written about this topic already.)
Elsewhere, Warren Ellis & Bruce Sterling are just commenting on stuff that comes up as they research their upcoming work. Cory Doctorow (and co.) & Charlie Stross just have more varied interests than Gibson, I guess. And hell, the way they're working on a new story is in a blog.
Um. I feel weird that I'm pointing out so many examples. I read all these regularly, though.
Ok, so you composed something, with a clear goal in mind...good for you. Now convince me that uploading it after you're done is anything other than clicking a mouse to complete a cut/paste. One has nothing to do with the other, except to foster a weak rationalization, which closely resembles a troll, me thinks. What...you just want to argue, is that it? bloggers....
The article's small and content free because it's designed to be not much more than a sidebar: the Guardian (Britain's major left-liberal daily) publishes one of these micro-interviews every week, with the same sort of blah questions ("Most useful site?" "Google", invariably). It makes more sense in the print version of its tech supplement, where it acts as normal space-filling journalism, and usually a plug for book, album, site, whatever.
Also, The Guardian is absolutely obsessed with blogs. Every week, the supplement will feature one of the following articles: "Are Blogs the new Journalism?", "Wi-Fi Blogging - Is this the Future for Reporting?", "Blogging - Journalism for Everyone?", etc., ad nauseam.
The last decent one I remember is Dave Green being cynical.
that's it....that's the best you can do? A big bad composer and professional blogger like you? C'mon, you can do better than that...I can take it....this is your big chance. Stand up for all bloggers and make me cry like a schoolgirl...give me your best shot...take your time, work on it...you can do it, I know ya can...yawn
Desolation Angels was much more like a blog than on the road. It is nothing but stream of conciousness throughout the first half.
It's him on a mountain top, and what he thinks. Not much of an underlying story aside from a few rats attempting to hyjack his food.
Great book.
http://use.perl.org
In your search string, add the term -blog
With Pattern Recognition now out..
Oh man, and I'm just about to turn in my pattern recognition assignment.. All this hard work for nothing? Whoa, I think I'll quit this CS stuff and start farming potatoes.
Uh-um
There is another aspect to blogging that I haven't seen mentioned in this discussion. Blogs can be a good way to see what it is like to pursue something you are considering. That is why I keep my blog. When I figured out what I want ed to study for graduate school, I went out and tried to find some first person accounts of what it is like to become a Nurse Anesthetist. I bet most of you have not even heard of one. Anyway, it was difficult at best, to hook up with one, let alone find out how school was for them. So When I started school, I started a blog to let people know what anesthesia school was like.
Anyway, I guess I am trying to say that not all blogs are just random thoughts about how someones school lunch smelled like a nursing home.
When will the street version come out?
"Guns don't kill people, bullets do."
I don't see that anyone's mentioned Jerry Pournelle yet.
Somehow he finds time to write novels while running a very insightful blog, writing a column for Byte, keeping active in the amatuer aerospace community, and generally having a life. I don't know how he does it, epecially at his age.
He proves that blogs and more, the internet, can coexist with real life(tm)
(for authors at least).
Does that mean the process of being a novelist involves eating your way up the food-chain until you either die or are excreted back to the bottom? :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Although I keep what you might call a blog on my own computer, it's more a private diary or journal than a blog. I kept a diary on paper for 10 years and have moved over to this system for numerous reasons. I think that blogs take away the integrity of a diary. A good diarist doesn't write for an audience, only for himself. Samuel Pepys' diaries have worth because he writes without the bias you would expect in a blog, where the writer may have an agenda or an axe to grind. I wouldn't look to blogs for facts and nor would I trawl through one looking for a stranger's opinion when I'm more likely to find the quality and breadth of opinion in a forum. Blogs seem to me to be there for egotists who feel they have an audience when they post to a webpage - often enough the quality of the writing isn't of a good standard. Things my girlfriend and I have argued about is an exception however. Well written and very funny.
It's kind of ironic, but then Gibson has never really been a techie at heart. More of a retro guy, from what I have heard and read.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Gibson is largely overrated...he's the James Joyce of the tech set (ok, not quite that bad). He's had some great ideas but has trouble putting those ideas into a well-written and complete story. Perhaps he should consider a collaboration for his next novel...
when a major political or social even happens, google is noised to the brim with blogs and you have to start at result number 40 or so before you get past the blogs. I can get a google search with porn turned off; why can't I get blogs turned off too?
Then I suggest you use Google News.
--
Karma: Chameleon (you come and go)
No arguement on ATP -- the only reason it was published is Gibson's name. IMHO.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
his books don't quite click for me, but I always liked the other odds & ends he wrote. his 1999 piece about ebay was always one of my favorites.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Come to think of it, the main difference between blogs and other sources of information are editors. I think we all need one.
The most important thing about blogging IMO is that it allows the average person to easily be a producer on the net instead of just a passive consumer (ala TV). Weblogs also allow for the publication of very obscure and specific content that would not exist otherwise (such as a weblog about various things to wget and curl).
Sure, there is a lot of crap in blogs, but everyone has something worthwhile to say once in a while. There are a lot of very smart people who write weblogs.
Those who think blogging is pretentious should read the following entry on Dave Winer's Scripting News.
Those in power always resist something new that empowers the masses in what was formerly their exclusive domain (such as news organizations suppressing the weblogs of reporters, and elitist intellectuals who think expressing opinion should be their privilege only).
I understand they've been available for some time.
The ecology of Gibson's relationship to technology is vital to his writing. His strength, like Coupland's in Generation X and Microserfs, has been his understanding of the zeitgeist of digital culture. He has an orgranic relationship to - and a prescient understand of - what is happening.
His latest book reflects this more than any other, and this is why it was not well-received by geeks. The social impact of the internet is reflected in things like teenage girls texting each other, not unix programmers with bad facial hair.
This interview explains Gibson's intentions.
While I may agree that a big part of blogging is egotistic crap, those people are still writing and hopefully developing their writing skills. Some people (including myself) might be better off with a personal diary, though. Nevertheless I find it hard to believe that some kind of writing is bad for your writing career, and other kinds are good.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
See http://kcrw.com/show/bw for a real audio version of yesterday's interview of William Gibson on the Bookworm.
I agree about the tiny default size of many fonts but the inability to resize the text is the fault of the browser. Mozilla and most other browsers (besides IE) handle that quite nicely.
I have to say that the reasons given in this interview (unless I missed some of this article elswere) are none. If a blog is an interference to your creative process, it is likely that you have not grasped the idea of the blog. One cannot expect to read every blog nor one should expect that it will replace the good old faithful notebook, which I personally believe is also the best form of encryption.
What blog can do is actually to distill the elements that otherwise are getting lost in the thousands of writen pages. Nothing like a database to poke through. I personally have dozens of notebooks that seem to be eating sometimes important references alive. Sure it is a part of the creative process that we lose and forget data and only the important things come together in the end as the final product.
Blog is just a tool. It is blunt and boring and should be treated with a cool head. If you feel your blog is not working for you it is likely because it is public.
Ahem. A quick summary of the stories you get there (which aren't picked randomly, as google'd have you think):
Muslims kill tens of civilians in futile attempt to take over the world
"Muslims aren't all bad", claims muslim.
After an entertaining compliment by a friend, I started writing web logging software.
Now *that* was fun.
What isn't fun is hearing people actually complain when I don't post mindless drivel on a timely basis.
Christ, is it my fault my life isn't so boring that I think my dog taking a leak on a tree isn't post-worthy?
Should(do other) people moderate their own weblogs?
I have almost a blog at http://www.geocities.com/totierne/mylog.txt or http://www.geocities.com/totierne/Breakdown.html . For the last 6 months I have been giving a moderation score to each entry, I found I can moderate my entry myself when I have written it, but not when I start to write. The moderation has been verified by my one long suffering reader (my sister).
Is this a useful idea that should spread?
I am posting this too late to get moderate slashdot moderation so I will estimate score 1 and a 10% chance of a reply.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Try Strebe. This book is really difficult to get your hands on nowadays.. A friend picked up a couple of copies for myself and another potential business partner.
Da Blog
Here's a little bit of a developing collaborative weblog for sorting out difficulties with respect to usability of our public library and some other related matters of interest.
o m / faq
Collaborative weblog
A guide to problematical library use. Boston Public Library.
http://GuideToProblematicalLibraryUse.blog-city.c
http://GuideToProblematicalLibraryUse.WebLogs.com
before the romantic free for all internet ages away
Actually, I found the nadsat quite easy to get to grips with. The original print of the book didn't have a glossary (that was added to the US version) because Burgess wanted his readers to use a Russian dictionary as they went through. Still, I found I could understand nearly all of it from the context and only rarely found myself skipping back a couple of pages to check previous meanings.
Turkeyphant
my blog no rock is stuff that would be on a "proper" website rather than a blog if I had the time and ability to get to a 'puter with dreamweaver on it everytime I had something to add.
If Google News is happy to run with press releases, then how come Google proper can't be arsed with blogs?
Personally, it isn't the blogs that bother me on google nearly so much as the forums and discussion boards. I've experienced a bit of blog noise, and my blog has even reaped the benefits of it...when I look through my http referrers, I get lots of hits from google for current topics that I just happen to mention. For example, when the new honda commercial came out, I was one of the first couple spots on google for related searched. I can see this as a problem, because I'm just an indirect link to the real source
However, I have a bigger problem with searching for something and getting piles of forums in the responses. If we can turn blogs off, I'd certainly like to be able to turn forums and discussions off...they're even worse than blogs because a lot of time they're blog like responses to a blog like post. I agree, it would be way nicer to have blogs turned off, but if we're gonna do that...I think forums are also a major item that should be checked out.
On another topic...I think that accusing blogs as idle chatter is a little off the mark. While I'm sure a lot are, I think a lot of people are trying to take it seriously and post their thoughts about life and current events. I don't consider that idle chatter, I consider that simply a different perspective.
The anti-salmon
Wow!! You got your comment refrenced directly by the Register
You must be proud.
And to keep this on topic, It's great that google is going to filter out blogs. It should clean up the search results nicely.
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB