In what is mostly likely to be the most *douchiest* thing that has ever been written by Jason Calacanis, he now declares blogging “dead”.

The funny thing is that this particular meme has some legs under other titles, such as “the evolution of conversation”, or “the further maturation of blogging”, or “the atomization of attention”.

But to declare blogging dead, and THEN spout off a list of reasons that are so myopic they border on cluelessness — its just plain narcissistic.

Here’s why.

His big claims as to why blogging dead revolves around a few ideas (I have parsed these heavily)

i) bloggers are dying to be heard via social “accelerants” like Digg or Techmeme

ii) they therefore spend more time promoting their posts than spending time *on* their posts, via Digg, Techmeme, or Twitter

iii) to excel in blogging means excelling in saying inflammatory things — i.e. link bait (yes, the irony is towering and overwhelming, I know)

iv) email lists avoid the promotion machine

v) email lists avoid the “problem” of an open conversation

I’m not going to debate each point, because, by now, I’m sure you’ve already seen the fallacy in each statement (but for a breakdown, see Steve Hodson).

But to suffice it to say that I found these ideas to be terribly narcissistic, only in so far that it seems narcissistic to condemn an entire way of communicating based on observations that really — by and large — involve experiences that are central to the way that a very narrow band of individuals have experienced them.

There are many, many, many other bloggers who don’t read Techmeme, and who don’t care.  In the niches they occupy there aren’t “social accelerants”, because they don’t yet exist for those niches.  And they may never yet.  Try submitting something to Reddit on the wonders of single parent hood / mommyhood, or Digg on some interesting, yet obscure, scientific factoid, for example.  You already know they’re not going anywhere.

And yet there are groups and ecosystems of bloggers out there, having a ball writing about these kinds of things.  They are just as valid and just as existential as tech bloggers, and other heavy weight, or wannabe heavy weight bloggers that Mr. Calacanis is basing his opinions on.

In fact, the kind of phenomenon Mr. Calacanis is describing really describes, I’d say, a tiny, tiny percentage of bloggers out there.  I mean, besides the tech blogging community, how many other bloggers are actively and as aggressively pursuing technologies like Twitter, Friendfeed, or Seesmic as a portion of their daily blogging “activities”?

You all know the round-about answer to that, and the answer of course is “nearly nil”.

So, to castigate and declare “dead” an entire medium like blogging based on some very narrow opinions is — well, yes, quite douchy indeed.  And I dare say its narcissistic as well, as you’re assuming “everyone” (i.e. the blogosphere at large) is experiencing the same malaise over blogging that one person (or a small group of people) are.

Blogging is maturing, that’s true enough.  There are tools now that didn’t exist years ago.  Its even easier.  And yet there are even more ways to broadcast your opinion and have other people interact back with you.  Its not that blogging is *DEAD* so much that blogging is changing, and its role is changing within the ecosystem of conversations and online communications.

And if you can’t see that?  Well, maybe you didn’t really get blogging in the first place.

My life — as, perhaps your life — is complicated.  There are a lot of competing concerns, from personal issues, to work issues, to family issues and beyond.  And that’s not even counting the blogging.  One really interesting thing is that as I am ramping up towards a new DJI (one day soon, I hope), I discovered I needed a place to leave thoughts, reminders, and notes for myself and only myself, that would have no value to anyone *except* myself.

So, I started one, in private, behind a password-minded gate, and installed the latest version of Wordpress on a shared plan that I have with a URL that I already owned, and just started doing it.  Why Wordpress?  Only because I’m comfortable with it and the lead in time would be minimal.

And what have I been writing about you might ask?  Things like:

• my thoughts about random personal things at any moment
• a daily (well, perhaps not daily) record of things — unique, interesting or important — that happened to me in and around the day that it happened
• lists of things I want to accomplish
• lists of online resources that I want to keep track of
• video clips of things that have some particular meaning to me and what I’m doing
• personal notes about things that I don’t want to forget as I’m studying
• medical news that I need to remember: annotized, categorized, searchable, linkable, and available.

Now I realize that there are a *lot* of different services that allow you to do this kind of thing.  Backpack is pretty good, in particular, as it has a built in calendar and an easy means to upload files (neither of which are built in to Wordpress).

However, I find as I continue to leave stray mind-droppings in this “Daily Record”, I had a funny eiphany the other day.  It really was … well, a diary.

Which is funny, in a way, as bloggers have done their best to evolve *away* from the blog as a navel-gazing diary into a more established, validated, and meaningful medium for disseminating information, opinion and analysis.

But I have to confess:  blogging as a diary really works.

I am not writing lovely thought out posts (perhaps I never do, I leave that to you), and that’s not really its purpose.  Its a dumping ground.  An organizing ground.  A memory aide. All searchable, update-able, and available anywhere there’s internet access.

All in a place that *I* own and that *I* pay for (and that ultimately *I* am responsible for).

Its funny.  I’ve been blogging for a while, and yet, blogging in *this* personal way is like reconnecting what blogging is about.  And while I initially shied away from the label, I am fine with it now.

I have a blog.  Its a diary.  But its for me and it works.

And if you’re a blogger, maybe this kind of blogging will work for you too.  Even if you don’t know — try it out.  Start a private blog somewhere to keep track of Stuff.  Stuff in your life.  Notes about stuff you want to do.  Stuff you’ve not yet accomplished.

In an odd way, its like getting back to where blogging started and in some ways, to some people, a very important part of what its all about.