Nr. 8 - September 13, 2003 - posted by Andis Kaulins Copyright © 2003 by Andis Kaulins
THE VALUE OF BLOGS
ETHAN ZUCKERMANN'S WEBLOG
Guilted by Google: "Ethan Zuckerman has a weblog with the motto "...dragged kicking and screaming into the world of user-created media"
He finds that blogs make the rankings at Google.... how right he is.
ARE BLOGS REVOLUTIONARY ?
Yet, I understand but disagree about Zuckermann's wondering
"whether blogs [are not] just personal homepages that get very well indexed by search engines"
or his not being convinced
"that blogs are any more than an evolutionary, not revolutionary, change from personal publishing".
Ethan, from my point of view, I find that blogs are truly revolutionary - and rightly ranked highly by Google - because they represent a development at the forefront of "ultimate" democracy, sort of an instant online "Hyde Park" soapbox from "any man" to "any other man".
The future impact of blogs over time should not be underestimated. The impact will be enormous.
Through blogs, this is the first time in history that we can actually "look inside so many people's heads in such detail" at the same time and almost instantaneously and see what is going on inside in that gray matter, something which most web pages do not do, being a more static medium. Education, business, politics, advertising, marketing, personal relationships, etc. will all change due to the absolutely unique insight into the workings of the human mind that blogs are providing for us. That is also why blogs are so popular - it is communication at its best, reflective but quick.
BLOGS AND FREE SPEECH
When we studied 1st Amendment "free speech" at Stanford Law School, I was known to wryly proclaim that for most Americans, free speech was an illusion, because it gave citizens the clear right to speak what they thought they wanted to say, but not the equally necessary right that what they said would be heard by anyone ... anywhere.
Blogs provide a forum which opens up a new world that what we say might also be heard - and, due to keyword indexing and the like - we can find the people who are commenting on subjects that interest us. Thus, the right speakers find the right audiences, mind you, for better or worse. In this manner, minds come into swift contact that would otherwise never "find each other". This phenomenon will lead to the formation of "mental alliances" of a sort never before seen in human interaction and will change the way we do things in many areas of human interchange.
THE VALUE OF BLOGS
VERY EFFICIENT FILTERING SYSTEM FOR INFORMATION
Arnold Kling at Corante "tech news, filtered daily" in his article "Is Blooging a Fad?", on the THE BOTTOM LINE, after sophisticated analysis of the issue, has determined that blogs are here to stay, especially when they serve the function of being a a very efficient filtering system for information.
USEFUL AS A PUBLIC INFORMATION TOOL
Rory Perry's weblog on "Law, technology and the courts" touts blogs as being of value for the judiciary "as a public information tool".
ABILITY TO CONNECT OTHERWISE DISPARATE PIECES OF KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION
Brendan O'Neill in his Gone to the Blogs states that the value of blogs to him is that it gives him the ability to "connect otherwise disparate pieces of knowledge and information".
INTERACTIVELY BRING NEWS AND EXPERTISE TO THE FOREFRONT
THAT WOULD OTHERWISE BE IGNORED OR UNKNOWN - plus ENTERTAINMENT VALUE
Outside the Beltway (OTB) finds that blogs have a value because they:
1) "highlight stories that aren't widely covered elsewhere, bringing them to the attention of people who are interested in them"
2) "bring expert analysis to the forefront that would otherwise be ignored"
3) "are more interactive than other media, including even talk radio"
UNFILTERED, GRITTY, AUTHENTIC - and INFLUENTIAL ENOUGH TO BE BANNED
see USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review ®
A NEWS SOURCE and a NEW SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES
see SlashDot
FACILITATE COLLABORATION
see Lead and Gold
HOBBY, FUN, SELF-PROMOTION
see Berlin Blog
INTERESTING PEOPLE SEND YOU INTERESTING STUFF
see Body and Soul
MEDIA AND MARKETING TOOLS
see WebmasterWorld
LEARNING AND EDUCATIONAL MEDIUM
see Blogging Fantastic
PUBLIC RELATIONS (PR), INFORMATION AGGREGATION, POWER MEDIUM
see A Networked World
USEFUL FOR KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE (K-BLOGS)
see Emergic.Org
EFFICIENT FOR INTERNAL BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS
see Gadgetguy
and the article of reference at the N.Y. Times
which indicates clearly that
GOOGLE uses blogs for internal communication among its workers.
That would seem to settle the issue.
Are blogs here to stay? No doubt about it.
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