Here is the sound (and thinking) of our friendly pioneer Dave Winer.
This is the first in a series of conversations with bloggers about blog-world. If you’re eager to sound off with a new immigrant about this curious territory we’ve entered, drop me a line (email: chris@christopherlydon.org) and I’ll record an interview for posting.
I’ve been a political reporter with the New York Times, a public-television news anchor in Boston, and host of “smart talk” on public radio. I think of myself as a journalist and all-purpose searcher, not at all a techie. But as a citizen and as a media practioner rolling through the trend storm, I am fascinated by the possibilities in this blogging space.
Blog world has the crackle and pop that traditional media conspicuously do not these days. It’s cheap and easy of entry. It’s politically free, wildly opinionated but also information-rich. It’s literary, it’s musical, it’s poetic. It has the full range of human curiosity and passion about it. A lot of it is funny, feminist, futurist, cosmopolitan, confident and all those other good buzzy things like edgy, enthusiastic, highly energized. The adrenal elite is here. So now what?
I’m interested in describing blog world as a democratic experiment. Can we point to social and cultural effects of this technology so far? Was it blogging that brought Trent Lott down? or Howell Raines, for that matter? Do you think of blog world as a community? Listen in, please, and feel encouraged to drop a line.
{ 37 } Comments
It’s been my belief that the blogstorm around Lott’s remarks functioned for the administration as so many recent events have functioned: as an unexpected opportunity to accomplish something that was already on their to-do list. Despite his personal failings (which cannot have bothered the southern Republican hierarchy much at all), Lott seems to have had loyalties to some of the Senate’s bipartisan traditions that, from the White House’s point of view, impeded its own agenda for that body. It seemed to me that as soon as the furor boiled up enough to begin to seep into the mainstream press, they pushed the button, and through the floor went Lott.
Well,
At least that wasn’t a total loss. Even though most of the responses are evasive, and filtered based on future percieved benefits to be recieved from selling a certain brand of blogging software (to New York Times perhaps?)
— Mark Pilgrim? was that a slip?
— “Elect a blogger”? Are you kidding me?
Blogging is not the Panacea that blogging software vendors want to make it out to be. This is turning out to be the next snake oil. Bloggers are the endall, be-all. right? not so!
It is true that the medium IS the message. And the Medium is a “diffuse” medium now. Its about vanity, its about expressing yourself and find ing out that you _can_ . And the feeling of not giving a fark.
Blogging can be throttled very quickly. Look at what Dave Winer himself did to John Robb’s blog? An Ex Employee??! How can this be reconciled with Dave’s statment that hopefully we select a “blogger” next time as president?
And what do you have to say about bloggers who are censored by their ISP? or by their Blogging Service Providers? Or even their own employers? Why is it not okay to express yourself, yet be professional in your job as well? Or to dissent and not have to worry about your blog being “be-headed” off the face of the “link-cosmos” ?
Blogging is like going home and playing SM games with your mind, and other people’s minds. Just a release! I would just as soon use Notepad and Apache to do my blogging. I don’t need all the features that RU and now everybody else and their uncle seems to want to give me. Just so they can lock me in..
The idea is to express yourself.. not to have gazillions of links, link extractors, link constipators, linke dredgers, link cosmos, link this.. link that..
An obsession with linking and blogrolling – and features that are really superflous to the core idea – is what is actually stifling the true edge of blogging, namely, indulgent, un-apologetic self expression.
This is why people like Dave Winer are dangerous. They actually promote useless features that us users really may not want. While creating built-in incompatibilities and tying users to their plat form and to their desktops. What we want is to express ourselves. How does a super duper link cosmos help me? I don’t know. All I want to do is say what I think is the right thing to say at the moment and not be persecuted for it.
And yes.. yanking a blog off the air is persecution, censorship and an injustice against the ideals of self expression, and democracy that no red blooded Blogware vendor is too ashamed to be an advocate of if it helps to fool the audience. Not to mention it being diametrically opposed to claims made by the proponents of these software packages to be promoters of “free speech” and “democracy”
Bloggers may not appear to be very active,or cohesive in their action, but one thing is for sure. It may not be as easy to fool this audience as it was to fool the Push-Media audiences of the yester years.
Our dear beloved vendors would do well to give their attitude a kick in the pants for the better and actually start practising what they preach.
Maybe they ought to start with protecting the blogging rights of the bloggers and ensuring the continuity of the thoughts that a blogger went thru the pains of creating and publishing. Then I would feel that they are qualified to be interviewed and presented to us as credible players in blogging.
P.S. Spelling mistakes, baseless allegations, and rants are all mine.
Good interview with Dave Winer. The one thing that the blogosphere is not is unselfconscious. Blogs blog more about blogging , it seems, than anything else. So with that in mind, I’m hesitant to describe the phenomenom further, other than to say that in my experience they remove the authority of traditional media while at the same time, organizing themselves around it. Traditional media becomes a supply channel and the bloggers democratically distill the information supplied and determine what is important and what isn’t.
jjdaley
I just started out defending Clinton from the more obvious lies of the rightosphere.
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Yes I do think that blog world is a community. I also believe that “Blog world” has the crackle and pop that traditional media conspicuously do not these days. It’s cheap and easy of entry.
I enjoyed you post on blogging.
Post interesting. Seems to remain in force.
This is the first in a series of conversations with bloggers about blog-world. If you’re eager to sound off with a new immigrant about this curious territory we’ve entered, drop me a line (email: chris@christopherlydon.org) and I’ll record an interview for posting.
Good Blogging definitely has a pop to it.
Great post keep it up
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