Serendip. open-ended public conversation, blogging?

Aspirations, successes, challenges (1994-2005), and update

• Wide readership
• Some significant and growing interactivity (as per Claire Ceriani, see also power point)
  
• Openings associated with declining an authoritative posture
  
• Problem: readership relative to interactivity/conversation

Lessons re open-ended public conversation

• Need on multiple topics multiple voices offering openings to new understandings rather than authoritative perspectives
• Needs voices that are able to articulate particular perspectives in terms that are significant for a variety of other interests
• Need voices that are committed to speaking in widely accessible language
• Need voices that seek to learn from responses
• Need voices that are able to promote further conversation rather than to end it
• Need readership that is interested in changing their own perspectives rather than either finding authoritative perspectives or persuading others of their own particular perspectives
• Need readership that believes it its own capability to bring useful perspectives to the conversation
• Need voices and readership that is committed to, believes in value of ongoing social and intellectual change
• Needs voices and readership that has the patience to be committed to ongoing social and intellectual change

Relevance to literature/genre/blogging

• Commitment to emergence stories, as opposed to non-narrative foundational, narrative foundational, or emergence stories
• Commitment to collectively significant as opposed to purely individual, idiosyncratic stories
• Absence of commitment to/valorization of the completed written word, idiosyncratic or otherwise

Conclusions

Serendip is committed to creating materials that facilitate ongoing, open-ended public conversation on subjects of concern to a wide array of human beings

Serendip is not a "blog" as that is generally understood

• it does not presume that what is of interest to individuals is necessarily of interest to others
• it does not aspire to wide readership on individual topics
• it does not aspire to conversation in the sense of quick interest/large numbers of responses

Serendip is a "blog" in its commitment to the principles that

• everyone should have access to/contribute to public conversation
• important topics are accessible, meaningful and able to be contributed to by people of a wide array of interests and backgrounds

Serendip is neither "blog" nor "literature" in the traditional sense but something new that

• depends on the broad open exchange created by the world wide web
• denies the privileging both of individual perspective and of authoritive perspectives
• seeks to encourage the emergence of new perspectives, by the continuing rubbing against of existing perspectives
• depends for the most part on special events where there is compelling need to find common understandings, on ongoing interplay between written words and face to face conversation, on serendipitous connections, and on deliberate efforts to promote exchange

Your thoughts welcome below, or in the class forum