Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

"Sometimes I think that the discourse of blogs doesn’t really reach that high. It’s more like show-and-tell — like kindergarten. See the nice link I found? Admit it, show and tell is fun and most outgoing adults still enjoy it. Some blogs stake out that territory and stay there — it’s comfortable and non-threatening. To an extent, it’s academic too. Say hello to the class and show them something so they will like you. Link-heavy blogs create persona through a process of selection, of valuation."

— Jeff Ward at Visible Darkness.

"... clearly we read webpages in a different way than we read books... clearly? According to who? To me? You? Who's to say that our general attention span in reading hasn't shifted in toto? Who's to say that I don't pick up a book expecting it to read like a webpage, the way I expect a film to jump and jerk like a three-minute video? Or not?"

— Steve Himmer at OnePotMeal.

"... weblogging is writing the world's greatest novel with 10,000 of your best friends. Hell on royalities."

— Shelley Powers at Burningbird.

This morning I stumbled upon a sort of informal symposium on the nature of blog-writing (via Jeanne d'Arc at Body and Soul). The fundamental question for me is whether blogging is a genuinely new form of writing or not. The answer, of course, will depend on what we citizens of the blogosphere — bloggers & readers — make of the possibilities offered by this new technology. It's fascinating & exciting to observe the phenomenon evolving in what still feels like its early stages. For this reason, if for no other, I'm glad to be here, doing this, at this particular moment — making my own exceedingly modest contribution to the evolutionary process.