Habermas as Blogging Philosophy




It is hard to match the socializing and harmonizing potential of sharing a meal with someone. What is there about the clink of silverware and dishes that stimulates conversation and a little problem-solving. Are blog sites just a weak substitute for good mealtime conversation? Unless videoconference pricing drop off a cliff, it is hard to imagine replacing blog sites any time soon with doing a videoconference lunch with multiple points around the globe. Now there's something to look forward to. A meal seems such a perfect image for communicative action theory. Given global social customs, one could conjecture that brains and stomachs take particular pleasure in doing their digesting together.

Habermas's Communicative Action Theory (1984) provides a deeper perspective from which to examine the nova-like explosion of blogging. Who would have known there was such an additional pent-up life-force needing further social discourse? What was so limiting about phones, email, newsgroups, listservs, chat and web pages that blogs exploded across the web's social universe with such force? Considering the virtues of a blog site, one must surmise that the needed harmonizing of ideas in the public sphere was not public enough in email, not interactive enough in web pages and not a stable or a clear enough narrative in newsgroups, email lists and chat.

For an introduction to Habermas, try Deflem's less dense treatise.

Deflem, Mathieu. 1996. “Introduction: Law in Habermas’s Theory of
Communicative Action.” Pp. 1-20 in Habermas, Modernity and Law, edited by
Mathieu Deflem. London: Sage. Available June 9, 2005 at http://www.cas.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zhablaw.htm

Even more digestible translations of Habermas would be of interest.

Comments

Arturs said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Arturs said…
Thanks.

about communication, also from blogging experience, please find slides

3 languages

(I removed my first comment - a link problem)
Bob Houghton said…
Fascinating slideshow ideas. I think it works well with Habermas, but the nature of Powerpoint is letting you down. I'm not sure that the text carries enough message. I would encourage you to add narrations to the slides to fill out their meaning and then post again. [In Powerpoint, select Slideshow in menu bar then Record Narration..]
Rosalina Kay said…
Check this Blog out:

www.tearsnwounds.blogspot.com

It's SWEET!!! Add some comments!!! have Fun with it!!

~Mindy
Arturs said…
I guess, we use 3 languages – thinking, knowledge conversion, communication, conversation tools at home, at school, working, at leisure etc.:
a bureaucratic language,
a knowledge language,
an everyday language.

Motivation and task-related goals of a thinker/speaker/writer are crucial to decide which kind of language is to be a priority.

We use these languages combining and converting in communication.

---

This problem is to be understood, I think.
Arturs said…
Eve and Adam tried to use knowledge language in the Garden of Eden. They have been answered by bureaucratic language. Such is life also in 21st century.

---

thoughts identifying reasons for lack of sharing knowledge (the sources of fear) at KnowledgeBoard, 26 - 29 May 2005, and in June

http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=141524&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

Popular posts from this blog

Innovations in Image Composition

3D Leaps Forward