all about this site,
with a little about its author
You may be wondering, why call the website Instead of a Blog?
; further, you may be asking what is a Blog, by the way?
Let me explain.
BLOG, n., abbrev. ofWeb log,a website that references and links to other websites, usually adding commentary by theblogger.Web logs are usually updated frequently. They aim to provide a public journal of the blogger's life on and off the Web. They range from the quirky and extremely personal to the studied and argumentative.
I like the idea of a blog. But I've a number of objections to the run of the mill in this genre. So I started this site, which features longer pieces than one would normally find in blogs, and updated with much less regularity.
Then, a year or more after I started this site, I began to blog in earnest. My occupation as an editorial consultant demanded that I keep up with certain news items and contemporary debate, so I started logging Webbed articles. And then found myself commenting in brief form. So I set up Designated Semiotician, an actual blog. Now the title of this site seems less amusing than before. It's not instead
of a blog, really, but in addition to one.
But it does provide reading that is a step above (I hope) the general blogging level. Still, if you note that length is not the main criteria of a blog, and that quality has nothing to do with its definition, and that this site does, after all, get updated with a greater frequency than many would-be blogs, then, well, maybe it, too, is a blog. No biggie. After all, when Benjamin R. Tucker published Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy to Write One, even the most careless readers quickly noticed its pages and spine and hard covers. It was a book in all but name. I trust you see the parallel. This site remains something of a log of my reading and listening and thinking, and it is on the Web, so... well, there we are.
— Wirkman Virkkala |
Click here for this site's general fair-use permissions statement. |
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