Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

 

The Relevant Irreverence of Blogging

Another Blog on the Fire.  Scott Petersen's 2004-05-31 (bloggers know no holidays) eWeek missive asks important questions about the Blogosphere as a phenomenon: "Blogging is red-hot, but just how constructive is it?"

I can't even find what I want in my own blog entries, which I tend to use like handy 3-by-5 cards, and I was happy to do that until it occured to me that many (or at least a few) strangers might be reading them.  And that is because of syndication and my increasing awareness of other blogs.  We are articulating something here, and it may simply be ignorable noise, per Scott:

"So blog on. If left to market forces, most blogs will live or die on their own. But get used to an era in which information becomes so ubiquitous it becomes almost useless. With a national election coming up, the stakes are high, so it's blogger—and bloggee—beware."

Meanwhile, this eWeek resource provides great coverage:

• Blogger congratulating themselves for user focus (my "Ewwww, ick - crap" is already on record), though widening the community is welcome.  It would be great if Blogger and Google got straight about their own agenda and what is being served here.  This might be useful advice for all movers into the social-computing, knowledge-management commercial space.
• The addition of blog searching as a separate capability of new MSN capabilities makes me wonder what MSN will do for logging itself.  I would welcome a comment/trackback facility that works simply and is not an echo of the IM wars.  (Blogger comments require you to have a Blogger Blog to comment non-anonymously and it is lame in other respects.)
• Efforts to blend and bend components for Wiki-blogging-publishing-chatting-listening-... .

The desirability of forming some coherent initiative is recognized.  No candidates have stepped forth.  Yet.
posted by orcmid at 5/31/2004 08:08:46 AM