Defining a blog - it's the conversation

Bill Ives wonders When is a blog, a blog? based on a talk from Ethan Zuckerman at the Berkman lunch series (not jealous, not jealous).  The trouble Bill has is that Ethan defined "blog" differently than the common description of "blog" as a technology.

"More generally, however, a blog is a way of thinking. It's a way of recording the argument you are having with yourself, admitting that you may be about to be wrong, and ensuring that, when you are wrong, you make your wrongness available as a public record. A blog is Socratic that way; it knows that it does not know. So we begin a blog, as we begin a show, as an act of good faith, a sign that we are working hard to get this right."

... This raises and very interesting question: What is a blog? Is a blog a style more than a tool? ...

While many people talk about blogs and blogging, we all usually describe them by the properties of the technology.  Sure blogs have the properties that Bill lists, and that I've seen in many other discussions.  But the interesting thing about the technology is that it enables people to share their knowledge and themselves in ways that have not been readily available in the past.  

Ethan's quote is in the vein of the "thinking out loud" model.  I agree with this, and I think there is more.  The activities of reading and writing blogs is the act of participating in a conversation - in multiple conversation - where you have control over how and where you speak.