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June 12, 2003
why blog?
A friend of mine saw my May 23 entry, which is about the moral dangers of seeking fame, and asked: "Is writing a blog part of an effort to become famous?" I replied (in effect): "I have looked deep within and discovered that 75% of my original motivation for starting the blog was self-aggrandizement." (At least I'm honest.) But I do have other goals, including:
- To explore the ethics of recording ideas and experiences in a public way—that is, in a way that's honest and potentially interesting for other people, and that respects others' privacy rights and my own duties to the institutions that I work for. Being public in this way is somewhat tricky, and it's supposed to be a modest experiment in living democratically.
- To experiment with this new genre ("the blog") by writing unusual kinds of entries. For the most part, I try not to offer statements of personal opinion or simple links to other sites, but instead I like to pose moral or philosophical questions that have arisen in some recent experience.
- To create a notebook from which I can later borrow for longer, more systematic writing.
- To have a platform for presenting short comments for a small audience, easily and quickly.
- To present myself to anyone who's interested. The best description
of who I am (as a professional) is a record of what I've been doing.
Posted by peterlevine at June 12, 2003 03:23 PM