Is there a BldgBlog for technology?

January 13, 2010 12:28 PM

I read MeFi. I read Boing Boing. I read Slashdot. I read lots of other blogs, but what I really want is something like BldgBlog but for technology / programming / networking / futurism. Does this mythical blog exist?

There are lots of enthusiasts' sites, like Engadget, Gizmodo, Slashdot, etc. that focus on products, tools, and the like, but I have yet to find a blog that takes a BldgBlog-like approach to technology. What would you recommend in this vein? What am I missing?

posted by bshort to technology (10 answers total)

Maybe you can find it in this recent AskMefi question asking people for their favourite specialist forums.
posted by Sully at 12:31 PM on January 13, 2010

Not precisely a blog, but you might find some interesting stuff on Hacker News.
posted by dbarefoot at 12:35 PM on January 13, 2010

Singularity Hub may be relevant to your interests.
posted by jrishel at 12:44 PM on January 13, 2010

Maybe pick up a copy of this year's Best Technology Writing and look up some of the authors in there? You can read Steven Berlin Johnson's introduction to see if it's up your alley.
posted by eggplantplacebo at 12:46 PM on January 13, 2010

While it is not necessarily the best recommendation around here, Reddit does have sub-reddits (categories) for certain topics.

For instance:

• Science
• Programming
• Technology
• Space
• Math
• Networking

posted by purephase at 1:00 PM on January 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

I haven't found any other blogs that really compare to BldgBlog in any field, but maybe the closest thing in my tech blogs folder is ribbonfarm by Venkatesh Rao. It's a mostly mix of technology, business, psychology, and futurism.
posted by mbrubeck at 1:10 PM on January 13, 2010

You could try the technology section of ScienceBlogs.
posted by demiurge at 1:42 PM on January 13, 2010

"Bunnie" Huang of Chumby and Hacking the XBox fame has a pretty good blog with a variety of technical and general interest stuff.
posted by ecurtz at 1:43 PM on January 13, 2010

Kevin Kelly sometimes reminds me of BldgBlog. But BldgBlog is a pretty high bar to compare to.
posted by Toekneesan at 2:44 PM on January 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

Kevin Kelly is a great suggestion; I should have thought of that. His lifestream is probably the best place to start.

Here are more ideas I came up with, again with the caveat that none of them really matches the unique qualities of BldgBlog:

Freedom To Tinker is a group blog from Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. It carries well-reasoned pieces about technology, security, law, and government. (It used to be just Ed Felten, and you can still subscribe to feeds for individual authors.)

Daring Fireball by John Gruber is mainly about Apple news, plus a healthy dose of general tech industry punditry, and Gruber's personal interests from art to baseball. It's insightful enough that even non-Apple-users should read it. (I haven't owned a Mac in ten years now, but I still read Daring Fireball.) The home page is a mix of long-form essays and short links-and-commentary posts. If you want just the essays, check out the article archive or the articles-only feed.

O'Reilly Radar is a group blog run by publisher O'Reilly Media. Lots of different technology-related topics.

Corante has a collection of blogs that include a lot of long, thoughtful essays on technology and science. It looks like most of them have stopped updating and the site is semi-defunct, but you now find some of the authors elsewhere. Clay Shirky still posts new stuff on his own sites sometimes, like the brilliant Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:03 AM on January 14, 2010