The value of opinionated, decentralized, interconnected information dissemination
Published by punkass marc November 23rd, 2006 in Fucking Holidays, BlogiticsIt’s no secret that Chris Clarke has grown weary of participating in the blogosphere, and maybe of the sphere itself. I’m too new to the format to presume I know exactly what he’s going through, but I do know how it feels to burn out on a writing format or forum. When you’re done, you’re done.
In his last post before taking a hiatus, Chris printed a comment left previously at Creek Running North. The commenter wonders whether blogs have any real value at all:
I’ve had the thought that blogs are “over.”
It’s a question worth posing on every blog:
What has all the good writing, the confirmation that there is really Someone Intelligent and Caring out there, actually accomplished—besides making us feel a little better for a few minutes?
Be honest about that. Even with the really big-time blogs. What real, solid gains—for people other than the big bloggers themselves, who enjoy a quasi-celebrity and a quasi-legitimacy—have been made because of blogs?
I’m not posing the question to put this blog down. It’s thoughtful, it’s well-written. But Chris himself mentions doubt about the real utility of blogs among his reasons to go on hiatus.
I think it’s a doubt worth addressing.
What is this medium for, exactly?
I thought that on this, the day of giving some thanks, I would give my thanks for the blogosphere by answering that question as best I can, albeit from a (relative) n00b’s perspective.
Whether you’re a blogger or commenter, blogs can make you a better writer. Blogging has forced me to write almost every day, sometimes several times in a day. That kind of frequency helps any writer refine her voice. Blogging and commenting can also reveal to you those things about which you care the most. I know I’ve surprised myself a few times with my reactions to certain issues/events, and those realizations have informed subsequent writing efforts. The freeform nature of the medium also allows for a great deal of lively experimentation, and allows someone to reinvent herself whenever it suits her. The immediate feedback one receives from blogging/commenting is unique to the format, too. All in all, I can’t think of a better expressive space to develop as a writer than the blogosphere. Any bad habits you pick up should be vastly outweighed by these kinds of advantages.
On a grander scale, the blogosphere provides an anti-Orwellian alternative to the whitewashed output of the corporate media oligopoly. Our grass-roots, decentralized meritocracy stands in stark contrast to the values and constraints of the national media structure. The ’sphere tends to be a faster and more nimble source of breaking developments than networks like CNN, and our ability to create an organic groundswell of support/opposition is a small but potentially powerful check on the Viacoms and Time Warners of the world. Our writers don’t have to send their work past a censor, and many of the national writers who do still use the blogs as a source of information/inspiration, whether they admit it or not. We’re freaked out about the loss of net neutrality because it threatens our freedom to share what we care about with anyone else who is interested without vetting it with Big Daddy CEO first. That’s a sign that this place matters. Sans blogosphere, I seriously doubt I would feel nearly as connected to the real world (as opposed to the “mission accomplished” world) as I do now.
The blogosphere is nothing if not opinionated, and that’s okay, because it connects us to like-minded people all over the world. Ideological isolation is unpleasant, and particularly after 9/11/2001, many liberals and Bushco doubters had no other public space in which we could connect, vent, and occasionally organize against the impingements on our rights and the US molestation of other parts of the world. Without blogs, without so many georgraphically-separated people coming together in a shared medium, I have little doubt it would’ve taken much longer for skepticism over the war to grow. But each of us found it wasn’t just a tiny pocket of our friends who were mad — folks all over the country and the world felt the exact same way. I’d wager the confidence gained from this solidarity made a difference for each of us at one time or another. Add that up and you’re getting somewhere.
Blogs also reveal what other-minded people are thinking. I know a lot more about how and why a wingnut thinks the way he does. Both the true idealogues and the full-o-shit shysters lay bare their thought process, deepest assumptions, and logical fallacies on the blogosphere, and that’s been invaluable to read (and occasionally taunt). I’m sure they feel the same way about us.
But other-minded doesn’t necessarily mean opposition-minded. Blogs connect us to whole new paradigms of thought that can change the way we see the world. Every day, eyes are opened to the value of feminism, or the subtlety of racism, or the frailty of some of our most fundamental assumptions. I think about life, the universe, and everything very differently since joining the blogosphere.
I’ve also made friends out here. Good ones. That should count for something, too.
Has blogging directly changed the world? Maybe not.
Or maybe so. At least, I think it’s impacted the thousands upon thousands of people who make the trip out here daily or weekly. As writers, readers, and people, who can honestly say they haven’t (cue cheesy music) grown and changed at least a little through this medium?
And we shouldn’t underestimate the impact our culture has on the broader culture. As Lindsay points out, without blogs, we probably wouldn’t have a Democratic Senate. How much the world changes as a result of this development remains to be seen, but I’m of the opinion that this is only one of many influences the blogosphere will have in the years ahead.
I love reading Creek Running North, and if Chris were ever to decide to hang up the keyboard permanently, he would be sorely missed as a source of insight and inspiration. Fortunately, new sources come into their own every day. That’s one of the best things about the blogosphere. For all the bitching and moaning we (I) do, it’s that kind of hope that keeps me coming back for more.
Thanks, everyone. And f*** the Dallas Cowboys.
Great post! I believe Chris posted about that comment, and it’s question, BEFORE the elections….I doubt it would have been asked afterward. I miss Chris too, but I get the diffused impression that he was spending too much time staring at a keyboard, between BEING a professional writer and blogging (and reading blogs…he was always on the same threads I was on, and I read blogs WAY too much! TIme-wise in my day, I mean) and not enough time with Zeke and Becky (guilty here too, with my own family).
It’s important to keep it balanced, have a actual life too! But as long as you don’t allow yourself to be time-sucked dry, I concur with you that blogging is a vast, very positive influence on our society. Meet enough like-minded people, and it seems possible to effect the national discourse. (Especially a national discourse dominated by a comparatively miniscule fraction of insane racist science-hating patriarchal misogynists).
“insane racist science-hating patriarchal misogynists” = teh awesome.
Well, yanno. I’ve been on the ‘net since 1987 (no that is not a typo), and as far as I’m concerned, blogs are not new. They’re simply discussion forums in another format. What was once usenet newsgroups are now distributed over websites. Sure, things changed along the way, the biggest being the individual control over the websites versus the asynchronous forwarding of posts all over the network. But the participation, the insights, the collection of wisdom and so on and so forth — all that has been going on in one form or another since the first email was sent out. Has it made a difference? Surely it has, even if we’re not aware of the connections. But does it matter? In another sense, no, because we’d always get together and argue and talk and hash things out whether around a campfire or around the glow of the LCD…
That isn’t enough?
Oh, and the Cowboys come pre-f***ed (Bring Back Drew, I say, that’d really do for ‘em)
Well, yanno. I’ve been on the ‘net since 1987 (no that is not a typo), and as far as I’m concerned, blogs are not new. They’re simply discussion forums in another format. What was once usenet newsgroups are now distributed over websites. Sure, things changed along the way, the biggest being the individual control over the websites versus the asynchronous forwarding of posts all over the network.
I think the individual control is critical. Not only does the post-discussion format make this a real writing platform. On the forums, there was almost something sad about striving to be a good, creative writer. But on blogs, it’s expected.
Just wanted to let you know, Marc– there are many fine, fine posts you write which I don’t comment on because there’s not much I can come up with to add to what you’ve already said, except to just give a lame, “That’s right, you tell ‘em, Marc!” So I stay quiet. But what the hell, it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m feeling the spirit of communal adherence. So I’ll give some thanks today.
That’s right, you tell ‘em, Marc!
I suspect that people are starting to question the utility of blogs because it has become apparent that they will not “change the world” in an earth shattering way, but that’s not the point to blogging, imo.
But other-minded doesn’t necessarily mean opposition-minded. Blogs connect us to whole new paradigms of thought that can change the way we see the world. Every day, eyes are opened to the value of feminism, or the subtlety of racism, or the frailty of some of our most fundamental assumptions. I think about life, the universe, and everything very differently since joining the blogosphere.
Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. Any real world change must begin with individual change, and that for me is the greatest thing about blogging. This may say more about higher education than it does about blogging, but my intellectual and moral thinking as an individual has seen more growth from the year and a half or so that I’ve been involved with blogs than the four years I’ve spent in grad school. In fact, blogging has made me less opinionated, more open to other ideas and questioning my own assumptions.
And a lot of us take what we learn from blogging with us out into the real world. I know that I bring what I’ve learned with me into the classroom, and I’ve had several students thank me for pointing them to feminist and anti-racist blogs because it opened their eyes to new ways of thinking (those that don’t copy and paste blog posts and turn them in as position papers, that is).
So yeah, I do think that blogs make a difference.
In fact, blogging has made me less opinionated, more open to other ideas and questioning my own assumptions.
I think this has been a biggie; in particular, I’ve learned repeatedly the value of assuming that there might be more information on a subject to learn than might be immediately obvious.
Anon,
Sure, the ‘net, and newsgroups and fora have been around for longer than some bloggers have been alive. That said, the ability of a blogger or collective of bloggers, as Amanda has pointed out, to more-or-less control the content of a given blog changes the nature of online communication—a blog can’t be completely overrun by people whose ideologiy is hostile to that of the blog founders or owners (though LJ communuty bombings happen, and over time a blog’s emphasis can shift.). In addition, it’s all more widespread now than it was in ‘87. My grandmom reads blogs. In 1987 my grandmom didn’t have a modem.
My blog is used for PSAs- what helpful things others should do(sometimes I’m not in the right city, but I think by putting the information out into the universe someone would eventually get the message) and what I believe needs to be cursed from the rooftops. It changes based on whatever I’m obsessed with.
there’s probably some great and famous communist quotable about “what use the pamphlet or the radical’s newspaper?” because a lot of what was written in the great polemics of Marx, Engels and Lenin read an aweful lot like extended blog posts - and htere is no doubt in my mind that all three of those would have had blog counterparts to their hardcopy theoretical and organisational pamphlets and writings - the nature and feel of the writing is just too similar.
I dunno, maybe it’s just because I’m finally getting around to reading Lenin’s “What is to be done?” in which he outlines arguements and ideological debates that are always rife in those sorts of movements and then basically smacks down a few of the stupider ideas.
Blogs are just an updated version of the radical pamphlets and newspapers of old -and any radical writing about such things tends to emphasise the importance of those in the raising the class conciousness of the proletariat so that the naturally emergent trade unionist urges of the working class can be harnessed and converted into the more fully unified national and/or pan-national class struggle designed not merely to mediate bourgeois society so that it isn’t merely as oppressive as it was before, but to work towards smashing the bourgeois state’s oppression entirely.
One of the major stumbling blocks, as I’ve written of before, is the dissemination of blogs, to be well read, and to gain a wide enough audience, you must exploit the largesse of Dkos/FDL set who have the connections to the upperclasses and their propaganda fonts to get them to advertise your blog; this limits the effective spread of ideas and theorical arguements (the aspect of the political struggle that blogs are more useful than the old hardcopy polemics because of the interactive nature of blogging) transmitted by most blogs to merely the unterblogosphere - as opposed to the uberblogosphere of Kossacks and Hamsher getting interviewed on CNN or FOX news or whatever it was.
Which follows neatly onto the second problem with the current nature of blogging: The disconnect between real world political action and blogging, and this I feel is what Clarke is bemoaning, but the thing is that blogging has adapted to the nature of the theoretical aspect of political struggle admirably, and proven that even if it remained merely the refuge for such theoretical struggle - which always underpin and ends up shaping the nature and method of the practical struggle, and is therefore not a bad thing itself - blogging would not be useless nor would it want for a valid place within a political movement, but what Clarke fails to grasp is that there is no inherent limitation to blogging that means that it has to exist seperate from the practical struggle - but connecting blogging to the practical struggle will not magically happen unless people actually work to make it happen and try (and routinely fail before they a working methodology) to find ways to make blogging intertwine with the practical aspect of the political struggle - and the upside of that is that such an intertwining will end up further empowering the theoretical nature of blogging and begin to invalidate the first stumbling block I just mentioned.
Which is a rather long winded way of saying: Come back and stop being a lazy idiot Clarke, if you want blogging to slice and dice and peel carrots As Well as all the other stuff it is already useful for, then attach blades and motor to the damn thing and make it work like that.
She said, in incomprehensible moon-speak.
I’ve been on the ‘net since 1987 (no that is not a typo), and as far as I’m concerned, blogs are not new.
Neither was the printing press when Tom Paine published Common Sense - that doesn’t make his pamphlets just like the Guttenberg Bible. It’s not just the technology that’s important, it’s also literacy, dispersion, and access.