John Lutz
Contact:
jlutz@uvic.ca
Department of History/Office of Community Based Research
University of Victoria
PO 3045 Victoria, BC, V8T 2K3, Canada
What is a SLOG?
A Slog is a slow, thoughtful, reflective and hopefully well-crafted essay, posted to the web. The SLow blOG, is my response to the proliferation of quick, off-the-cuff, self-indulgent and less-than-thoughtful Blogs (weB LOGs). Blogs together with their diminutive brothers: tweets, texts and other forms of quick communication threaten to swamp the information horizon with the intellectual equivalent of popcorn: easy to make, quick to consume, tasty when warm, but nothing more than corn fluffed out with hot air. After it cools for more than a few minutes its highest use is packing material.
A Slog is a deliberate, even ponderous, injection into the world of ideas -- a part of the slow scholarship revolution. To the world of ideas a Slog is meant to be what slow food is to gourmands. If a good Blog goes stale after a few days of no posting, a proper Slog stays fresh for years without a new post.