See: Michael H. Goldhaber’s The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net

It is important to note that my comments had nothing to add on debates over archiving blogs. What I put up on a blog is neither fixed nor permanent. The electronic fibers carrying the message are transient ether. This ‘unfixedness’ of blogging in its electric form is what gives the technology the power to immediacy but also its weakness in impermanence. I was startled to discover that this blog debate made it all the way to the esteemed librarian.net, showing how blogs are indeed “meta” — insofar as they are electric echo chambers of like-minded people coming to the repeated realization of their fascination that other people are currently seeking similar answers to similar questions. It recalls the classic math word problem of permutations, where 9 people can form 36 handshakes. Blogging then might be seen an infinite territory of permutations of the interested, and this comment box as just one of those unknown number of possible handshakes.

Goldhaber writes “We are living a temporary attention economy in miniature right at this moment.” My thoughts on blogging are what can or should be included in potential archivist networks? What is worth our attention and what is not? It is my smallest of hopes that asking this question is equally, or hopefully more important than reading the 50 (and growing) blogs of people in a similar profession.