Category: Blogs

I have previously discussed my rationales for blogging, in the brief initial entry to my blog, and in the blog entry celebrating the second anniversary of the blog.

Many human activities have multiple motives, and blogging is no exception.  Today I want to focus on a secondary, but important motive for maintaining artdiamondblog.com.

A few decades ago, when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I was wise (or fortunate) enough to participate in a voluntary, non-credit, informal seminar offered by Deirdre McCloskey on research and (mainly) writing in economics.  The advice expressed in the seminar was eventually expanded and refined in McCloskey’s wonderful essay "On Economical Writing."

One of the bits of advice in McCloskey’s essay is that in the research phase, it is useful to carry around some 4 by 6 cards on which to write quotes, and thoughts, related to the research.  Good ideas would not be lost to failed memory, and in the latter stages, the card format lent itself to organization and re-organization.

I embraced this advice with over-the-top enthusiasm, not only purchasing a bunch of 4 by 6 cards, but even purchasing them in several different colors.  (I may have already been primed for this advice by my days of carrying boxes of index card evidence around, when I was on the Riley High School debate team.)

Of course all this was before the days of the personal computer.  I still carry around little note pads for the times when inspiration hits without closeness to keyboard.  But most of the time, a keyboard is handy.  There are software programs, such as Microsoft’s useful "OneNote" in which one can add notes, and organize them, in a private fashion.  And I often use OneNote.  But often it occurs to me that a quote or thought that seems useful to me in my research, might also be useful to someone else in their’s. 

The cost of putting such a quote or thought on my blog is only very slightly higher than the cost of putting it down on OneNote, so I often bear the slight cost, with the hope, in the spirit of Albert Jay Nock, that some unknown member of "the remnant" will put the quote or thought to creative good use.

"You do not know and will never know who the Remnant are, or where they are, or how many of them there are, or what they are doing or will do.  Two things you know, and no more: first, that they exist; second, that they will find you."

Source: 

Nock, Albert Jay. "Isaiah’s Job." Atlantic Monthly, March 1936.

    The bars for "July" only include data through July 13th.  Although the best-known metric is "hits" (in green), a more meaningful metric, for many purposes, is "visits" (in yellow).  The source of this graph is the Webalizer program as maintained by the Living Dot service that houses my blog.  (The graph above was produced in the evening of July 14, 2007.) 

The first entry in artdiamondblog.com appeared on July 15, 2005.  In the two years since, the blog remains true to its modest and vague founding motives, but has evolved in some small ways.  I think pictures and graphs help communicate many important stories, and make them more memorable.  So the blog in recent months generally includes such elements in about half the entries.  Even better are dynamic accounts of stories, so I have gradually increased the links to video clips that illustrate important stories.

Also, more often than at the beginning, I offer my own somewhat extended commentary on some person, issue, event, book or article.  As time permits, I have also tried to include an occasional entry that records some reminiscence of some important scholar or telling experience that I have had, that I hope might be of value to someone in the future.  (One example of this sort of entry, in the past year, was my entry on Milton Friedman on the occasion of his death.)

I believe that the web log is useful in my teaching and research, and also hope that it provides easier access to some useful material for others who share my interests and goals. 

Of course, every activity has its opportunity costs.  I try to limit the costs by disciplining myself to only post one new entry a day.  And I try to take advantage of blogging economies of scale, by composing several entries at a time, and pre-scheduling them into the future. 

The benefits are hard to access.  I know that in June (the most recent full month for which data is available), the average daily number of "visits" to my blog was recorded as 1,132.  But I do not know very much about how useful the visitors found the blog, or if useful, how often the use is the kind of use I originally had in mind.

On the other hand, I believe that the process writing and publishing refereed journal articles has its drawbacks.  It is slow, and the refereeing is uneven, and often actually makes an article worse.  When the article is finally published, it is often in a form easily accessible only to a few, and as a result often has negligible impact on knowledge or on the broader world of action.

So I think it is time to take some risks with some experimentation in other forms of knowledge production and communication.  Wikipedia is one promising experiment.  Blogs represent another.

Sometimes I read, or observe, or remember something that I believe might be of value to others; sometimes a datum that has significance about how the world works, or maybe how to make the world better. I thought a blog might be an efficient way to record and communicate, so I’m giving it a try.