Meg’s recent column (see previous post) sports a cross-link to a May 31 item by science-fiction writer and bOing bOing editor Cory Doctorow that is also part of O’Reilly’s Blogging Essentials, due out any day now. In it he describes the benefits he derives from blogging, calling his blog his “outboard brain” (much as Dori calls her blog Backup Brain).
Cory’s a great writer. His vivid imagery paints clear pictures in my brain, so it was tough picking any single passage to quote here (in other words: read the whole thing!), but I did particularly like this part:
Blogging begets blogging. I blog because I’m in the business of locating and connecting interesting things. Operating a popular blog gives people an incentive to approach me with interesting things of their own devising or discovery, for inclusion on Boing Boing. The more I blog, the more of these things I get, as other infovores toss choice morsels over my transom. The feedback loop continues on Boing Boing’s message boards, where experts and amateurs debate and discuss the stories I’ve posted, providing depth and context for free, fixing the most interesting aspects of the most interesting subjects even more prominently in my foremind.