What to do with a blog?

As seems to happen with the vast majority of blogs started with good intentions, I have let this one fall by the wayside. In an era of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the idea of  writing more than a sentence or two at a time for a single posting of unpaid content seems almost quaint. Coming back to it now, I think the blog format still has use, if one has some sort of purpose in mind for it.

My intentions for now are to use this blog as a kind of space for thinking out loud (or “typing out loud”, as I called it a few years back). Publicly working through thoughts seems like it has the potential for greater benefit that I hope to see for contemporary societies. Right now, I have a few basic ideas that I want to clarify to myself, and with luck I can clarify them to other readers as well.

I’m one step closer to being a PhD holder rather than a mere “PhD candidate” now. I suppose that situates me more legitimately now in the class of experts known as “academic”. Experts are supposed to be authorities, though. From what I understand of Anthony Giddens’ work, the legitimacy of that authority also depends on experts keeping the public from knowing about the doubts and uncertainties they inevitably face in trying to apply their expertise, though. If an expert publicly admits to uncertainty or ignorance, this can undermine not only the authority of that expert but the legitimacy of expertise in that field as a whole. Yet I think the working of expertise in this way is, for various reasons, becoming untenable. I want to try a different approach.

I am not an expert. I nevertheless do think of myself as an academic of some kind. I am currently not sure what kind.  Maybe in the process of typing a few things out, I can start to find out. One thing I’m fairly sure of is that I don’t want to “lock down” ideas. I once thought of the blog as a good balance between the “written tradition” of long-form writing and the “oral tradition” that better describes the use to which most people put digital media these days: laden with emotion, oriented more towards relationship-maintenance than communicating information, and occurring in lots of small chunks. From my readings of Innis, such balance is a basic precondition for escaping the bounds that limit each tradition individually. I want to bring that potential out from the blog format more, if possible.