Amitav Ghosh said it at Duke University when he stopped by a few weeks ago. He is saying it again on his blog (amitavghosh.com). Why is a blog such a phenomenal thing? Why might the blog’s ancestor not be the newspaper but the illuminated manuscript?

…bloggers began to pay more attention to the things that make the blog a specific kind of artefact, an object that is shaped and crafted before being put on display. And this is exactly what is most exciting about the blog: not its immediacy but the fact that it offers the possibility of a return to an older form of representation, one which permits a seamless union of words and pictures, images and text. Continue Reading…