> Today the functions of bearing witness and providing live news feeds have been taken over by the social media and texting. The blog post.. does require an extended use of language and some formatting. Tweets and texts are another matter altogether; the blog cannot hope to compete with them in speed or urgency. Nor can blogs compete with Facebook and Twitter as forums for public discussion. Internet trolling is... rendering the ‘Comments’ feature a luxury that only well-funded websites can afford.
https://amitavghosh.com/on-blogging-part-1-of-4/
#GhoshOnBlogs #AmitavGhosh
On Blogging: Part 1 of 4 – Amitav Ghosh

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> ... it was only after that [urgency] pressure was removed that bloggers began to pay more attention to the things that make the blog a specific kind of artefact, an object that is shaped and crafted before being put on display. And this is exactly what is most exciting about the blog: not its immediacy but the fact that it offers the possibility of a return to an older form of representation, one which permits a seamless union of words and pictures, images and text.
#RetroMediaBlog
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> When we think of the technology of movable-type print it is always in a spirit of gratitude, which is only as it should be. Yet, for all its blessings, print was also responsible for deepening the divide between words and images.
> Before the invention of print words and images had usually been closely joined, no matter whether in paper or papyrus, parchment or bark. Illuminated manuscripts joined letters and images so that each added to the other.
#ImageLetterCombination
This got me thinking of #IARichards and the #EPBooks , his hopes for TV😭
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> It was the mass-produced book that upended the criteria by which books had hitherto been judged. Affordability became the new index of a book’s appeal: everything that added to production costs came to be regarded as extravagant and unnecessary, even frivolous. This confirmed the prejudices of textual puritans who had long looked askance upon the admixture of images and text. By the mid-twentieth century the triumph of the text was complete.
https://amitavghosh.com/on-blogging-2-of-4/
#PuritanicalText !?!??
On Blogging: 2 of 4 – Amitav Ghosh