Dave Winer’s Fingerprints…
Meanwhile, over at the ZDNet ranch, Dan Farber reflects about the first decade of blogging , with prominent mention of pioneers Dave Winer and Doc Searls. There are now about 70 million of us (but who’s counting?). While the noise-to-signal ratio in the blogosphere has gotten all out of whack, we have now entered the mainstream as blogging has become a democratizing force.
Farber also gives a brief review of a new book he calls very engaging, and quite controversial and provocative. Andrew Keen’s book has the formidable title: The Cult of the Amateur: how the democratization of the digital world is assaulting our economy, our culture, and our values (available June 5).
Keen’s book sounds like a worthwhile read, though from Farber’s review it sounds as if we ordinary, everyday bloggers need to maintain a thick skin and guard against becoming pissed off in the face of some of Keen’s observations.
3 Comments so far
“Assaulting”?? I don’t know about you, but the blogs I read (and, for that matter, the one I keep) seek to affirm culture and values. That “our” in the title, incidentally, is troubling: just who is determining this “our”? More often than not, “our” turns out not to be “mine.”
I’m not naïve about blogging and how the diffusion of the sources of knowledge and commentary has clear downsides for (traditional) notions of community. As you know, I’ve posted many a time on that subject. But the greater good of the blogosphere is the democratization of access to and commentary on sources of knowledge. One person’s fear of a loss of control (as seems implied in the book’s title) is another person’s celebration of the equivalent of a free-trade agreement in the marketplace of ideas. In theory, at least, such openness should force us to be smarter about those ideas: their provenance, their merits, etc. Maybe I’m utterly lacking in imagination, but: while forcing people to be smarter will make most of us holler, given our natural tendency toward intellectual inertia, far better that than reduced and controlled access to knowledge.
Thank you for connecting us to Dan Farber’s comments and the review of the forthcoming book. I find this kind of controversy extremely stimulating. I have been trying to determine the broader value of the bolgs I have time or inclination to read. I love being able to write my “letter to the editor” and have it published immediately and see what others have to say on the same subject. Reading letters in news magazines or news papers can be interesting, sometimes for the selection of the printed letters by the editors themselves. Corrections in the print media are slow to be made or relatively too late.
I would welcome some filters (rating truth, research, quality of writing, etc. ?) but wading through a multitude also gives me a good idea of what’s going on in the world, much like walking through the world bazaar.
Thanks to both of you for your insightful comments. I have come to an interim conclusion that there are two broadly different understandings of blogs. Interim because I continue to be bombarded by the showers of ideas and opinions that flow so freely. Internalization of even a few of those from time to time keeps slowly morphing my understanding.
One camp is held by those who do not blog and have never participated in blogging activity, either actively or passively. They like to write books, articles, columns, etc. on what they see as negative, looking in from the outside through darkly tinted glass.
The other camp is made up of all of us, those who blog, read blogs, and comment on blogs. To be sure, there are many subsets of this population, as well as of the first. Bloggers have many varied motivations, and reap varying degrees of differing rewards. We tend to do it rather than write books about it.
One of the most interesting realizations I have had since dipping my toes in the water almost 2 years ago, is that this is anything but a homogeneous population. We tend to somehow, almost magically at times, gravitate to a small subset of the population that reflects our values, interests, wants, desires, and fears. Many of those we associate with become as real and valuable to us as their flesh and blood counterparts that we bump shoulders with daily.
By various estimates, there exist somewhere between 55 and 70 million blogs. As Technorati says, “some of them have to be good.” Each of us has contact with what, 100, maybe 200, and a close relationship with probably no more than a couple dozen of those. Think of how many other little solar systems exist in this entire galaxy of blogs. There are many others like us, but how do we find them? How did you find me? How did I find the ones on my blogroll that I visit daily, or regularly?
More quesitons than answers… As always…