Scott Berkun

George Orwell & the future of blogs

I still have trouble with the use of the word blogging – Why can’t we just say writing? Sure, I agree that blogs have changed many things about how we communicate and what we expect from people who write online, but at the end of the day when someone puts words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, the skill is writing. I don’t care where those paragraphs end up, or what technologies are used – the biggest challenge is to write well.

So here’s a most interesting experiment: what would happen if you’d take the diaries of one of the centuries greatest writers and post them online, in a blog, one entry per day?

Well someone’s doing it with George Orwell’s diaries. Will his writing style work? Will we notice something missing given that he died a half century before the first blog? Head over there to find out.

I’m convinced the future of blogging depends most on what we can learn from great writers from the past – and Orwell is a excellent place to start. However, its his diary. Something I doubt he wrote with publication in mind – so who knows what we’ll find.

(Hat tip filmoculous)

• Posted Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 12:20 pm


• in On writing | 2 Comments » |