Public diaries

“I believe that an intellectual should use newspapers the way private diaries and personal letters were once used. At white heat, in the rush of an emotion, stimulated by an event, you write your reflections, hoping that someone will read them and then forget them. I don’t believe there is any gap between what I write in my ‘academic’ books and what I write in the papers. I cannot say precisely whether, for the papers, I try to translate into language accessible to all and apply to the events under consideration the ideas I later develop in my academic books, or whether it is the opposite that happens. Probably many of the theories expounded in my academic books grew gradually, on the basis of the observations I wrote down as I followed current events.”

– Umberto Eco (1986), in the preface to the American edition of Travels in Hyperreality

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  1. By thomas n. burg | randgänge on 8/24/2003 at 2:32 pm

    Chronofiles und Emotionen und E-Schreibe
    Alex Halavais fördert Umberto Eco zutage und macht daraus eine Plädoyer für den Einsatz von Blogs in dem Sinne wie es Buckminster Fuller mit seinen Aufzeichnungen, den Chronofiles ,

  2. By jill/txt on 8/25/2003 at 4:29 am

    http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/archives//.html
    Now this is a good quote for bloggers, found and cited by Alex: I believe that an intellectual should use newspapers the way private diaries and personal letters were once used. At white heat, in the rush of an emotion,…

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