The future is now
: Paul Chaney asks the conductors on the Cluetrain about the future of blogging and, of course, gets great answers. Go read what David Weinberger has to say. Here’s a taste of Chris Locke:
To Seth Godin, blogging doesn’t count much because what he and his audience of business pukes care about counting are EYEBALLS. Even some bloggers are now playing this game, which is both saddening and pathetic, imnsho. Blogging and the net in general – the web in particular – have given human beings a place where they can express themselves “as” human beings, without kowtowing to sponsors who “always” dehumanize what we now, stupidly, call “content” in the service of hawking their products.
I am not arguing the necessary evils of products or commerce (though they do have their evils, to be sure, most so transparent to our current culture that we don’t even notice their effects). Rather, I’m saying that people need a place to BE people, with all the unique concerns, joys, sorrows, hopes, fears, passions, delusions, depressions, epiphanies, and those hugely various sorts of things that we have, qua human beings.
And Doc Searls:
It’s not mainstream, and most people aren’t reading blogs yet. But race car driving, farming and espressos aren’t mainstream either, and all matter to our culture.
I don’t see blogging as a medium. In fact, I don’t see the Net or the Web as media, either. Rather they are places, or spaces, where people gather to do business, to talk, and to make culture. Just like we do in real-world markets….
So if blogging isn’t a medium, what is it?
A practice. Specifically, a personal practice of journalism in the literal sense of that word. Every blog is a journal. The number of blogs, which keeps going up (now in the millions), is redefining journalism rapidly, and unavoidably.
Blogs are real voices of real people….
Dontcha love it? I had lunch with Doc and Britt Blaser on Friday and I had to run to another meeting and I just hated that. Could have sat listening to Doc all afternoon. That should be a road show: An Evening With Doc.
