I've just discovered knol, a newly invented word which I suppose comes from "knowledge on line". It's all explained in the link I just gave you. Basically, it's a software program similar to Blogger but designed for posting longer articles that may be of more lasting interest. I'm intrigued by the idea, and expect that I'll be creating some "knols" of my own. In the old days, before Internet, I devoted a lot of time, energy and anxiety to writing queries and then articles to send out to editors at magazines and newspapers, and sometimes I would get published and paid, but more often I would not, and even when I succeeded (see my Notes & Essays for samples, or my C.V. for a more complete list), the pay was meager. For those of us who write for motives other than money, which (Dr. Johnson to the contrary notwithstanding) is almost everybody who writes seriously, this is an attractive alternative to sending articles to an editor. Maybe my first knol will be about self-publishing, what it has meant historically (I just read a life of William Cobbett) and what the new technologies may portend, for the publishing industry and for political and social thought.
Meanwhile, I'll keep blogging. I like the short, ephemeral form. Which may not be so ephemeral, since things posted on the Internet seem to last forever.
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