Blogs as Museums, Not Media

The Ideas Blog points us to some interesting thoughts about the nature of blogs. They share two articles that frame weblogs, not as media formats, but as a modern day version of the Renaissance Wunderkammer (“cabinets of wonder”).

Julian Dibbell explains:

A Web log really, then, is a Wunderkammer. That is to say, the genealogy of Web logs points not to the world of letters but to the early history of museums — to the “cabinet of wonders,” or Wunderkammer, that marked the scientific landscape of Renaissance modernity: a random collection of strange, compelling objects, typically compiled and owned by a learned, well-off gentleman. A set of ostrich feathers, a few rare shells, a South Pacific coral carving, a mummified mermaid — the Wunderkammer mingled fact and legend promiscuously, reflecting European civilization’s dazed and wondering attempts to assimilate the glut of physical data that science and exploration were then unleashing.

Julian Dibbell: ” Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Man”

Cabinet of Wonders: “Blogs as Wunderkammer”

[via NYT Ideas Blog]