Readers' comments

Apparently my blog is blocked in China again, and readers who reside in China had trouble posting comments. Two readers have sent their comments through email on some recent topics, and I'm posting these for them here:

1. hsknotes commented on "What Kind of Country is China Today?":

You may want to look at some work on 'authoritarian deliberation', or as I prefer to refer to it as, 'deliberative authoritarianism' “审议权威主义”.

as you know, 审议 is just one of the ways of expressing 'deliberation', so you might want to search a few of the others as well.

Rebecca McKinnon gave a long talk on the internet in china where she touched on this, but the idea is not hers. A quick search on the internet can get you to many of the main source, and watching Rebecca's talk may be interesting.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheons/2009/02/mackinnon

2. Paul Armstrong-Taylor commented on "Blog Rally to Help the Boston Globe":

Newspapers need to figure out what they can do better than anyone else - TV or other websites. The problem is they try to be all things to all people, and, in any field, there are other places people can get better, more focused information, analysis or whatever.

Take sport: you can go to ESPN (website or TV) for general information; you can go to somewhere like Baseball Prospectus for statistical analysis of baseball; you can go to Sons of Sam Horn for interactive discussion of the Red Sox.

It is simply not possible for one publication to compete with all these sources - and others in news, politics, opinion, business, etc. I think newspapers as we think of them - generalist publications - can not survive. They need to focus on one area where they have an advantage and become the best source for that area. Maybe the WSJ is one example of how to do that - focusing on business.

One area I would like to see newspaper focus on is investigative journalism - trying to uncover the truth when there maybe some who do not want the truth exposed. Generally I think the US media does a poor job of this. Political reporting often consists of: Democrat said X, Republican said Y with no effort to determine the truth and or whether one or both were lying.

I think some effort to use their media access to report the truth not only would improve the knowledge of Americans (compare knowledge about the case for Iraqi WMD prior to the war in the UK and US), but would also providing a compelling reason to buy a newspaper.

Who, or What, Is Doing the Fake Links?

Last night when I logged in The China Beat to read their interview with James Fallows (a great interview by the way), I was quite surprised to see several of my blog posts appeared linked to that one. The problem is, I wasn't the one who created the links, and even if I wanted to, I would have to time travel, as those posts of mine occurred earlier than the one they were linked to. In short, those links apparently were done by some automatic program on the internet – quite annoyingly.

The China Beat is a great blog and I have no problem promoting it. However those links made it look like I was promoting my own blog. I've always detested excessive self-promotion, and I'm very bothered by those automatic links.

Similar things also happened on my blog. Recently I often see the so-called "links to" appearing under a post of mine, but a check on those links showes they are not actually linked to my post. That is, they are fake. In most cases I tolerate the fake links, but I have also deleted a few that are obviously irrelevant to my blog content.

So the question is, who, or what, is creating the fake links? One suspect is Sphere, which I first noticed a while ago on CNN. Often one can see under a CNN report the "From the blogs" feature, marked "powered by Sphere."

Sphere offers a so-called "contextual widget" free to bloggers; at first I was intrigued and even considered installing it. However after I saw the irrelevant fake links appearing on my blog and fake links using my blog's name appearing excessively on other sites, I became sick of it.

So, my message to Sphere or any similar program: it is obnoxious and violation of my right of authorship when you insert fake links that are not actually linked from my blog posts. Please stop doing this!

"The Bigger Tent"

Are bloggers considered journalists? Read this in Columbia Journalism Review.

The Endless Knots Blog

by Jessica Lipnack

Introduction: Today I'm talking about writing and gardening (and you'll see where my blog header comes from) on Jessica Lipnack's Endless Knots, an eclectic blog. (She explains the title here.) Jessica is an intelligent, hard-working, and energetic woman expert in the design of virtual teams and network organizations. She has published a pile of nonfiction books on the subject. She has also written a novel haunted by the ghost of Margaret Fuller, the great 19th-century futurist. Since our friendship began in 2004, we have helped each other in our writing careers and also fought over sensitive topics such as Tibet's relationship with China. We disagree on things and we agree on other things, yet our friendship continues.

I asked Jessica about her motivation for blogging, interesting things that happened to her blog, and the evolution of Endless Knots, and here is what she tells me. – Xujun

I began my writing career as a reporter when I was sixteen, working for a daily newspaper in my hometown, churning out as many as seven or eight articles a day. That experience, gained over four summers, gave me the training to grab facts and turn them into something readable. Shortly after I got the job, the editor gave me a column, which is where I learned how to explore single topics in more depth - and have fun with it.

When I first went online in 1979, I quickly became addicted to posting to online conferences, originally on EIES (housed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology), and then on many other online networks, listservs, and eventually websites. Soon, I found myself posting similar things in multiple places (the reporter in me has the irrepressible urge to share what I see), writing similar emails to multiple people, and wearing out my keyboard with repetitive strokes.

In early 2005, I had a fortunate request. Because I'd written many books about networks, a client who trusted my opinion asked me to attend a conference on the rising phenomenon of social networks and report back on what I'd learned. There, a blogger described his experience with his blog in such compelling terms that by the time I got home, I'd drafted the first post for what would become my blog (a too-long essay, in fact, to be a real post) that I distributed to my network. Then a few months later, I attended Solstice Summer Writers Conference (at your suggestion, for which I'll always be grateful) and realized that this event deserved to be blogged. The writers at the workshop – Dennis Lehane, Roland Merullo, Meg Kearney, Manette Ansay, just to name a few – were fascinating ... and saying things that I thought others would want to hear. Thus was born Endless Knots. And Solstice took! I finished the novel I was working on in nine months in midst of three work trips to Europe.

Some bloggers choose particular topics as their sole focus, a common practice that I regard as absolutely wrong-headed. One of the joys of blogging is that there are no editors pounding on you to stay out of areas where you are just in the infancy of understanding. I'm interested in a lot of seemingly unrelated topics, which means I wander into fields where I'm a complete novice. One brought unexpected gifts. Last December, I did a post about reducing the carbon impact of team meetings, suggesting that "we," meaning anyone reading, develop a checklist to use before traveling endless miles to attend the next face-to-face meeting. The Content Economy, a blog in Sweden written by people I didn't know, picked up on it and drafted a checklist, which a blogger in New Zealand (whom I did know from speaking to his group when I visited there last year) turned into a flow chart, and the whole stream of blogs has been widely referenced on other blogs. So that was a wonderful, practical outcome of a speculative post.

Some other, completely unexpected and unusual things have come from my blog: I was asked to teach "The wisdom of bloggers," a course on blogging for creative writers in an MFA program, have had a number of invitations to talk to executives about the power of new social media, and been asked to write a monthly column for The Industry Standard.

You ask how my blog is evolving: I'm still having fun with it. In a few moments, I'm leaving for a morning meeting with a group of bloggers whom I've invited to join me on a panel this week at a technology conference here in Boston. The panel's topic is "What blogging brings to business." The move from the online world to the real one continues to fascinate me as I meet new people and develop new friendships with others around the world. I deeply believe that by expressing our most fundamental beliefs we build bridges across cultural, political, religious, and ethnic divides that ideologies and fear cannot bring down. Writers bear responsibility for spanning our separateness, especially when so much of the world is fragmenting.

Serious Frolic in LitPark

I'll be having fun in the "park" today – the LitPark, where I'll talk about the first Chinese novel I read as a child, the artwork in my book, and other things. Susan Henderson, a talented and generous writer and editor, is the host of this outstanding literary blog. My book's namesake story, "Men Don't Apologize," was first published in Night Train when Sue was the managing editor there.

LitPark is an exceptional blog in that it has a lively, entertaining, compassionate, yet thoughtful design, and is participated in by a wide audience from the literary and art world. It is always a learning experience when I visit LitPark. If you are even peripherally interested in literary stuff or writing in general, take a look and you'll see what I mean.

I asked Sue a few questions about her blog and here is our conversation:

Xujun Eberlein: Sue, what motivated you to start blogging?

Susan Henderson: I saw too many writers tearing each other down, hording industry secrets as if it gave them an edge, and that was a part of it. The other was that I would regularly talk with writers via email or private rooms at Zoetrope, and the discussions about writing were so interesting to me, at some point it just seemed like a good idea to start having those conversations where others could listen. Not just to share industry secrets, but so others could hear the joys and struggles of writing, editing and trying to get published.

XE: What is the most interesting thing that has happened to your blog?

SH: A lot of really wonderful things happened from blogging, not the least of which is the community of writers, readers and artists that's come together. It's also been a real pleasure watching writers finally find some success, seeing the hard work and luck come together, that's the best. Also, blogging has taught me to be more spontaneous. I think I over-edited my thoughts before. I've definitely shifted from an unrealistic desire to reach some kind of writing perfection to a desire to communicate with others and create a dialogue.

XE: The last bit especially resonates with me. What's the one unusual thing that's come from blogging?

SH: Well, the weirdest thing was that I was contacted a year ago by a talent scout at Warner Brothers, and to make a long story short, ended up doing a (hopefully never to be aired) reality TV show. My "role" in the show was a frustrated, workaholic artist.

XE: I'd love to see that show! How do you envision your blog evolving?

SH: The real joy I have with blogging is that it is all about my whim. Sometimes I'll do a serious interview. Sometimes I just want to gossip with a masseuse to the rock stars or talk about Neil Gaiman's hair. Having a structure but no real agenda within that structure keeps it exciting and spontaneous for me.

"Having a structure but no real agenda within that structure" is indeed the fun of blogging for me as well.

"Why Do I Blog?"

by Jerry Waxler

(Jerry Waxler is obsessed with memory and remembering. For both literary and personal reasons he is intensely curious as to how events transform themselves into memories, and the process by which those memories become written works. Jerry has put together a tremendous collection of writing and thinking on this topic. Valuable stuff for anyone trying to write a memoir, or even record memories, and also for fiction writers. In his interview with me we touched on the relationship between memory and imagination, a pretty fascinating topic. More to this is that his Memory Writers Network blog is full of well-written, informative, and interesting essays. I asked Jerry about his motivation for blogging, and the following is his answer. – Xujun)

The television show, Grey’s Anatomy, is about a group of medical interns. Even though they seem to be clumsy, barely born doctors, their status as “beginners” takes place at the end of an arduous struggle through high school, college, and medical school. They are reaching the top of a mountain they have been climbing their whole lives. After much striving and competition, one of the interns wins a coveted spot scrubbing into her first surgery. She watches what to the rest of us looks like blood and guts, but to her is the dance of life, healing a body by cutting and reorganizing some of those messy tissues. She floats out at the end of the surgery, totally saturated with this peak moment, a climax of the endless desire that brought her to this point. She turns to a fellow intern and asks “Why would anyone do drugs?” I feel the same wonder after my first year of blogging. It is the culmination of a lifetime of desire.

For my whole life, I’ve been intrigued by the variety of human experience. I also love to write. Over the years, these two passions have persisted and grown. I want to understand people, and I want to write. But until recently, I have been unable to combine these desires into one, so I wrote about other things. My first two books were about writing. When I was 52, I received a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology. After imbibing this rich array of insights into ways that people could grow, I wanted to put it all in writing, but I didn’t want to just keep it in a drawer, and I didn’t think it would be a publishable work. So I wrote it on my first website, mental-health-survival-guide.com, which thanks to the magic of the internet is still out there.

I kept writing and learning about people, and a few years ago I stumbled on memoir writing as a system into which I could pour all my passions. Memoir writing turns attention inwards, where we can examine our own journey. And it also turns our attention outward, learning how to shape a story that makes sense to others. This is what happens in a therapist’s office. During therapy people authentically share their lives and in the process they improve their own self-understanding. I wanted to extend this from individual therapy to include everyone who is looking for deeper meaning within their lives.

I did not study the value of memoir writing in school. I had to develop the ideas myself, so I began to study, reading memoir after memoir. Each one teaches me two things: what it was like being that one person, and what it was like turning that life journey into a story. The lessons poured in, and I began to organize what I was learning. Again, I did not want my ideas to sit in a drawer, so I turned to blogging. At first I thought this would simply provide an easy way to publish my essays. That turned out to be only the beginning. I continue to find more and deeper rewards.

The longer I blog the more advantages I discover. By receiving comments and visiting other blogs, and finding people interested in memoir writing, I was both discovering and creating a micro-community of like minded individuals. The opportunity to write, then publish my ideas, and get feedback and community from others has been enormously empowering. Like the radicals who printed brochures during the American Revolution, I can put together and hand out my ideas, and I don’t have to stand on street corners.

What is the revolution I am fomenting? I suppose in one way, blogging itself is a revolution. Turning your individual, unique knowledge, passion, and wisdom into story and publishing it to the world is one of the neatest ways I have ever seen to incite deeper understanding and sharing of self. By blogging our life stories we can learn about each other and perhaps improve world peace. Hopefully it will work better and more creatively than trying to promote understanding through street protests.

The blogging world is highly diverse and diffuse, and so it requires exploring to discover blogs that convey this passion but they are out there, sharing worlds, connecting and empowering people. Some are empowering politically, giving people a chance to express views they wouldn’t have a way to publicize any other way. Some are empowering culturally, because sub-communities, outsiders, cliques, ethnic minorities, or in fact any group can band together and share ideas. And others are empowering creatively, because the creative spark becomes brighter when it connect with people in the world. Is blogging the only and true revolution? I don’t think so. Blogging and writing are just tools. The revolution that interests me most is to grow, individually and collectively towards greater wisdom.

One of the most surprising things about blogging is that it’s a form of performance. I have always been shy, preferring to avoid the public. Now, as I blog, I am learning how to extend myself towards strangers. Some become friends, in this new internet sense of friendship, while others remain onlookers. This means I am a performer, which is a mindboggling expansion of my social skills that I never expected to be achieving in my sixties. (I just turned 61 so I’m in the thick of it now.)

What’s next? As I learn more about life story telling, I realize that stories become powerful not just because of external events, but because the storyteller found the power in the events. This has caused me to look more closely at situations in my life that I always assumed were mundane, and what looked like blood and guts becomes the powerful, exhilarating struggle to find meaning within the ordinary. I intend to reveal more of what I discover through my blog and perhaps someday in a book. Over time I expect my investigation will lead in new directions. I find that, in a way, aging is a spiritual experience and at some point I may shift from finding the wisdom in the past into finding wisdom in the future. For now, what’s next is my next blog entry. I’m on deadline every week, under pressure to learn and grow, and find words that let me share myself with the world.