Meta Post

As the name implies, this is a post about posts.

Having attended Fresh Dialogue 25: www.DesignBloggingIsChangingEverything.com presented by the NY Chapter of AIGA I gained a fresh appreciation for the blogger as citizen publisher in a discrete space. In this case, that space is design, which is hardly discrete but rather global in reach and impact.

While this blog is a member of the "note to self" genre, the master bloggers who spoke at the Tishman Auditorium at The New School begin each post with the same motivation, but are so self-assured as to the relevance and potentially transformative power of their findings, that they make sure to share.

Somewhere out there is an invisible boundary between the isolated and the ubiquitous, as far as blogging goes. It's kind of like the event horizon associated with a black hole, except instead of things that are outside being drawn in, it's the musings from the core getting pushed out. And once they escape, there is no stopping them.

Perhaps this is an extension of the blogger's ego. If ego has force, then perhaps it imparts to the person's efforts that extra inertia required to break beyond the bounds constraining it's spread. Each of the presenters at the AIGA event projected considerable egos. To do what they do, they must. After all, they are taking it upon themselves to filter the output of that slice of the world they are inspecting, setting aside those examples that they feel possess certain attributes, and sending them back out into the world having conferred special status upon them.

To be sure, the response creates a feedback loop that determines whether or not the effort should be encouraged. But, I bet the folks I saw would likely have moved on to another form of expression had this one not proved so reinforcing.

If you detect a note of envy in my tone, you're right. I do not have the egotistic energy or disciplined drive to stay on track as consistently and fervently as the master bloggers of the world. Maybe I don't need to. Maybe an occasional "note to self" is all I need to record the odd brainstorm or validate my personal views, to myself. Publish.