Good examples motivate
Since then, my opinion on blogging has changed markedly. Now the question no more is "To blog, or not to blog?" but rather "Do I have something meaningful to say, regularly enough, and can I write my message so that it engages and informs, maybe even entertains?" My views on personal web sites, too, have transformed.
This change of heart came gradually, and like all changes to my behavior it is overdetermined: there are more reasons than just one. A very big thanks goes to quite a few thoughtful, well written, informative, community oriented and positively contributing web sites and blogs, created basically by just one person. I sincerely recommend these:
- Art Botterell's incident blog, well-weighed words on public warning in emergencies (a part of his incident.com website)
- Doug Harper's unbelievably generous and versatile Online Etymological Dictionary
- Owen Ambur's personal web page, a collection of wise articles on how we people can function together
- Mikko Särelä's Thougths from Id, partly in Finnish, includes many insightful society-orieted comments
- The Halting Point, a blog that mixes the most serious with the most hilarious in an inspiring way
Copyleft & Co. save the day
However, the real driving forces behind my conversion have been the community oriented changes in producing, publishing and lisencing information (well, any content, really). Most notably:
- The GNU General Public Licence (GPL), the Creative Commons and other copyleft lisence formats that enable open-n-share-alike publishing
- The rise of the wikis, Wikimedia Foundation's wikis-for-almost-everything as the most recognized flagships of this movement
- The availability of free or cheap web site, blog and wiki space for anyone, not just companies and other organizations
... and finally, online communities engage
The critial spark towards actively contributing came when I realized, during the summer of 2006, the power of online communities that becomes possible by the socio-technical enablers listed above. I am awed by, for example, the accomplishments of these communitites:
- The ISCRAM community (Information Systems for Crisis Responce and Management), which brings together researchers and practitioners from a global and literally life-and-death importance niche area of learning and expertise. We could not cooperate as efficiently, if the web site did not exist, and it has some blog and wiki characteristics, too.
- ACM-W, CRA-W, Systers and ResearcHers, which all bring together women in various fields of ICT
- vote.org, "The National Initiative for Democracy" (USA), which strives to bring descision power back into the hands of ordinary voters
- The Brights' Net, which strives to make the naturalistic world view better known and understood
- The geochaching community, which combines a fun hobby with engagement in our environment
Today there is a well-enough established memetic, practical and legal infrastructure for sharing what I choose, how I choose, and making sure that what I want to donate into the public domain stays in the public domain. So the question "To blog, or not to blog" has now been answered. I have received much from this world - in the global perspective I am comparably well off, well educated, safe and secure. It is time I give something back.
In the future, if I live and stay healthy, look to this site for weekly, bi-weekly or monthly comments on, for example:
- emergency announcement (EA) systems (EAs are also called public warnings, citizens warnings and emergency alerts)
- emergency preparedness and crisis management, especially communication, situational awareness and sensemaking
- security and safety issues of socio-technical systems
- learning, doing and teaching scientific research
- cognitive difficulties, such as reading and writing problems, attention deficit (and/or hyperactivity) disorder (ADHD), Asperger's and Tourette's syndroms, and autism
- active local (and global) citizenship
- parenting
- my outdoor hobbies: birdwatching, geochaching, trecking, swimming, bicycling, dingy and other sailing
- my indoor hobbies: reading, movies, music, good food and drink
* Force [in my usage] : the source of empowerment and inspiration of your preference, be it a divinity, and organized belief system or the needs and inherent value of our fellow human beings
Peace,
Ronja