Technology’s influence on writing
One point to keep in mind throughout the semester is how the technology we use affects our writing, whether on a static website, blog, or something else. Jon Udell writes about the “unintended consequences of syndication“. He had created a widget on his blog to post his recent del.icio.us bookmarks, and it changed how he bookmarked:
If you do decide to explicitly publish your bookmarks in a sidebar widget on your blog, it may change the way you bookmark. It did for me, anyway. The balance shifted away from purely personal information management and toward the kind of editorial sensibility that governs the blog. It was around this time that private bookmarks became available in del.icio.us, and that’s been helpful. If I’m researching something and I just want to collect a list of resources labeled with some obscure tag meaningful only to me, there’s no need to flow that stuff onto my blog page. Conversely, if I want to draw attention to something in a public way, I can. It sounds great in principle, but in practice I think the friction involved in making that choice on a per-item basis made me less likely to bookmark either publicly or privately.
Have you noticed whether any of the technology we’re using has influenced your writing?
[...] Earlier I mentioned Jon Udell’s post on the influence of technology on writing. Now, the Read/WriteWeb is looking at how mainstream media are increasing their use of web 2.0 services. From their table, one can see how major newspapers are using not only RSS feeds but also digg and del.icio.us, and to a lesser extent, newsvine. It will be interesting to see how online and offline genres will continue to interact and influence one another. [...]