Having a bit of a look around tonight trying to get a figure on approximately how many blogs there are out there in the world....I am thinking perhaps 150 million and growing...
Bound to be a few opinions about it out there.

Shaymus,
so how do we figure out what this means? A lot of these blogs are very personal and many are very visual. So what is happening here from a cultural studies perspective in relation to Lovink's claims about nihilism and cynical reason.

You went back to your original format...you answered your own question.

you chose the way YOU wish to blog...The pundits can choose too or chose not to.

hmm...looks like you changed back...
when I made the previous comment your old format was there minus the pic at the top

Shaymus,
I didn't understand what you meant by 'you went back to your original format'--I though you referred to the photography and the remark puzzled me in terms of photoblogging.

The blog style keeps sliding between old and new. If it is in the old style, press 'refresh' and it comes back to the new style. We are not sure what is going on.

Shaymus,
well it is true that you chose the way YOU wish to blog...The pundits can choose too or chose not to.
That is why junk for code is different from public opinion, and the former has a more personal tone.

However, the weblog is alsos an experiment in writing, or rather publishing. Junk for code, for instance, has changed as a result of incorporating my own photos into it--the initial cultural criticism has been modified by artistic expression. So it unites art and criticism (what is normnally divided) whilst it's image posts places it in opposition to the good writing ethos of the hegemonic literary culture concerned with the literary.

Weblogs don't exist in a vacuum--they become part of a network ---eg., the network that has sprung up around Larvatus Prodeo. This includes many from SA who do not connect with junk for code, even though the latter talks about their own city (Adelaide) and post images of the state's landscape to foster regionalism.

I don't visit blogs like Lavatory Rodeo very often...too much mooing and manure....without using it to make things grow.

I generally prefer blogs where the writer shows some sort of creativity and personality.

Off topic, I just watched the DVD aeon flux...it was entertaining...
I grabbed Wolf Creek too while I was there..havent seen that yet....supposed to be good.

Oh, one good thing about Blogging is it gives those not good enough to be published a place....and others a place to be noticed

gary, my comment about the middle east versus cat blogging was mostly rhetoric, but it was partially in response to some of Lovink's off-the-cuff comments at the talk about the 'pajama people' and some semi-related comments (not by Lovink) in this interview (with Lovink) about ranking and lists:
http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/08/24/1728211&mode=nested&tid=15
"Additionally, CNN has recently incorporated 'ranking lists' in their news coverage, ranking and covering top stories by who is clicking through to what on their website. Tonight's top story: Mel Gibson's guilty plea, followed by JonBenet's killer's confession...while Lebanon and Israel barely round out the top ten. [...] The tendency I see is an increasing emphasis and reliance on connection, specifically, quantitative connection over critically engaged reflection."

The binary here between critically engaged reflection and quantitative connection is problematic. The problem that Lovink isolates is that there is much non-critical blogging that doesn't have any quantitative connection either! There are other axes, this is obvious, I chose to talk about it in terms of 'interest' because it fit with 'cynic' rather well.

The 'interest' thing is mostly targeted at everythng from Jamie Oliver cooking to backyard blitzes to ride pimping, where some personal dimension is rendered spectacular by the media. I don't discuss this at all the blogging post, but I suggest old media discovered this as an antidote to emergent networks of shared interest. That is, to capture interest and sustain it in particular middle-class ways through a nexus of media and other commercial interests.

So the interest may be shared and not necessarily personal as such, and it may be impersonal (such as a car or food enthusiasm) compared to an enthusiasm for 'my' backyard. Bloggers find their own ways for connecting up the shared aspects of personal interests, rather than having it necessarily dictated or at least cultivated (sometimes only on an affective level) by the media.

Shaymus,
I've only just started to have another look at the Australian blogosphere after a couple of years.

Most of my energy has been in my own weblogs. The downside of that is that I'm fairly isolated from the networks that have grown up. Hence my having a look at the Larvatus Prodeo network. It is a good example of the evolution of the blogosphere.

Glenn,
If we turn away the corporate media v blogger window and look at the world of blogging from the perspective of networks of interest (hobbies/documenting everyday life) then there are a lot of junky blogs for sure. Moreover, as you point out, there is a tendency for an increasing emphasis and reliance on connection, specifically, quantitative connection over critically engaged reflection; and there is much non-critical blogging that doesn't have any quantitative connection either!

Critically reflective weblogs are a minority in Australia for sure as are those weblogs with their roots in cultural studies.

What wasn't addressed in your post is: how much is this weblog buzz an example of cynical reason ie., cynicism as enlightened false consciousness—a sensibility that is well off and miserable at the same time; that is able to function in the workaday world yet is assailed by doubt and paralysis.

The postmodern condition or comportment in respect to a nihilism in our life is Cynicism; Sloterdijk's critique is of a state of consciousness, which is brought about by the process of enlightenment. A cynic is someone, who as part of a blogging network, lives by principles they do not believe in. The only knowledge left for a cynic is a trust in reason, which cannot provide a firm basis for action and this is another reason for being miserable.

Given this interpretation of Lovink, I'm not sure what you are arguing. Are you saying the junky blogs are an example of cynical reason? Or are you saying that cynical reason refers to the way the corporate media has incorporated this buzz in the blogosphere into their media market? Are the hobby shared interests --food and cat blogging-- an example of cynical reason?

Or are these kinds of weblogs and photoblogging a response to the condition in which we do not believe in what they are doing anymore--in academia or work or politics?

I haven't read the Sloterdijk book, and it looks like a must-read for me.

Hmmm, to (not) answer you question, I was going to post a large comment about desire (configured as 'interest', as above) and belief in D&G's work but I don't have the books with me, so I might wait until I get back to Sydney.

Basically I am saying forget cynical reason. I don't do things because I don't believe in something, I do them because I am interested in something. Even blogging as an expression of the most tortured agonistic engagement with established social expectations has to be understood in the positivity of its engagement, and as a creative act (event) of blogging that codes the struggle (becoming). I don't agree with a negative definition of blogging as an expression of "what we do not believe in" rather than a positive definition of blogging as a networked assemblage of interests.

Glenn,
I read the Lovink interview with Kenneth C. Werbin at Interactivist Info Exchange It is held that the rise to the top of the blogosphere's ranking lists--- as filtered by the cynical reason of Technorati ---heralds a troubling trend of our waning critical engagement. They argue for a critical engagement with digital technology and a heightened awareness of the control inherent in its use.

You can get a good flavour of Peter Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reason here. --note the critique.

Lovink misleads. If in the workaday world is assailed by doubt and paralysis; then Sloterdijk’s proposed counter strategy is the kynicism of antiquity—the sensuality and loud, satiric laughter of Diogenes.There are many weblogs that do just that.

I agree with you that the desire expressed in what used to be called our 'hobbies'---and which now includes blogging--- is a primary active force that produces real connections and assemblages of fluxes of intensity.These are fluid and open ended in which new connections and new forms of relation are possible.

This way of blogging takes it in a different direction to Lovink--as you suggest the key is becoming--a becoming other that enhances the power of transformation.