This just in from Steve Rubel:

Immediacy vs. Reflection

My move from a blog to a lifestream format has elicited two kinds of responses so far: approvers and doubters. I don’t think this has anything to do with me, but rather it’s reflection of how we’re adjusting to the broader shift in media.

The web is slowly moving from an architecture of pages, to one that looks like a stream. Such models favor immediacy over reflection.

This was something John Borthwick from betaworks and I discussed this morning over breakfast. It’s definitely front and center in his mind

. Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Tumblr and Posterous are all platforms that embrace the stream metaphor

. Blogs, RSS, static news stories are remnants from the era of pages.

The stream is where the web is going. Does this mean thoughtful analysis is dead? No. However, the ubiquity of the stream and the tools to filter it, the increasing consumption of content on mobile devices and finite attention spans means there’s a greater focus today on immediacy than reflection. This was a major factor in why I shifted how I publish and embraced a tool that lets me contribute more in a streamed format, yet still have a home base on the web.

Perhaps I am wrong, but it feels like those who are most critical of the transition from blogging to lifestreaming perhaps are not ready to embrace such a format. Maybe there’s room for everything. What’s your view?

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. ~Cyril Connolly

To have dialogue we need tools for dialogue. My best “sessions” of discourse online have took place in 1) newsgroups (pre Web), 2) mailing lists and 3) IRC / Skype and other chat services.

I think I (me!, me!) wrote something about this in my blog in 2007. Here:

http://flosse.dicole.org/?item=beyond-blogs-and-wikis-i-want-better-tools-for-dialogical-teaching-learning-and-research

http://flosse.dicole.org/?item=blogs-wikis-and-knowledge-building-some-clarifications-and-comments

- Teemu

Great considered opinion. I think that there is a notion of life streaming that needs to be considered but I think the context will always be king as to whether we are moving down that path quickly.

Consider that it is the digital natives and immigrants that you are talking to when you express this opinion and then I would consider that in this context they can relate to the value of life streaming and what this means.

However we still need to understand why people self publish and why people subscribe. I do believe that there is a need to dive deeper into subject matter and gain greater clarity and understanding. The trend towards micro blogging prevents this and this could find us with less of an understanding and superficial learning concepts rather than a more “complete” understanding of that which we want to learn about.

It may be author centric but that is what the reader wants and appreciates. In this context it is still very much a valid medium.

Good grief! First the Book, then the Training Materials. Now the Blog. There seems to be a pattern here and it’s speeding up.

Aren’t all avenues for written opinion a bit author-centric? We might just have to wait another 150,000 years for evolution to close the gap between the individual and the group when it comes to effective sharing of opinion.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep writing comments on blog post while the going’s good.

Catchya later

I’m wondering if the party isn’t moving on.

and

I am considering following in Steve’s footsteps. I may re-focus Internet Time and the Informal Learning on articles and use Posterous as my main publishing stream.

Actually, I haven’t thought long and hard about this at all. It’s just that Steve’s notion of focusing on everything rather than solely his blog caught my interest. As I wrote in my post, more and more of my work doesn’t appear in my blogs at all.

Alan, I take your point. Maybe what I’m after is refining my blogs by keeping what ought to be Tweets or Comments out of them.

Michael, when reading Steve’s material, it’s important to remember that he’s a PR guy, not a philosopher. The Leonardo post was a bit lame, I’ll admit.

Steve is not giving up blogging; it’s not either/or. He’s reserving his blogs for more reasoned articles and essays. At least, that was my reading of his intent.

As I reflect on this, I’m coming to see that the issue is where the value is. Frankly, I’m not sure where I’m going to end up.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

jay