Information Fluency

Research shows that one of the assignments in this class will make you a social pariah. If it comes up, blame me. I mean, this is not an exercise in cool; people don’t write literature reviews for fun, right? You are not required to express enthusiasm for blogging, you just have to do it.

But author Nicholas Carr is taking the news hard.

I remember when it was kind of cool to be a blogger. You’d walk around with a swagger in your step, a twinkle in your eye. Now it’s just humiliating. Blogging has become like mahjong or needlepoint or clipping coupons out of Walgreens circulars: something old folks do while waiting to croak.

Did you see that new Pew study that came out yesterday? It put a big fat exclamation point on what a lot of us have come to realize recently: blogging is now the uncoolest thing you can do on the Internet. It’s even uncooler than editing Wikipedia articles or having a Second Life avatar. In 2006, 28% of teens were blogging. Now, just three years later, the percentage has tumbled to 14%. Among twentysomethings, the percentage who write blogs has fallen from 24% to 15%. Writing comments on blogs is also down sharply among the young. It’s only geezers – those over 30 – who are doing more blogging than they used to.

I know this from experience: students do not wake up in the morning (or afternoon, as the case may be) thinking “oh boy, I’m gonna write my blog post today! Now I have a reason to get out of bed.” But it’s required. So eat your vegetables, get some exercise in, and write your blog posts. It’s good for you. You can be cool on your own time – as I’m sure you will.