Michael M. Rosen ponders the blogosphere at the first anniversary of his writing for Tech Central Station and concludes without exaggeration that the experience has changed his life

My education has transcended simply writing articles.  The
interactions between reading and writing, between online and print, and
between visual media and talk radio have crystallized for so me — as
well as for many Americans — the paradigm shift in how we receive and
process information.

The ability of individuals to publish their ideas, argument or simply their diaries,  has started one process. With proliferation of content, technology and tools to monitor, track and sort the information are being developed, as I write. All this has been happening a few years, a short time in the offline world but an era in the fast and furious world of blogs. It is enough to start observing the dynamics of the publishing and distribution explosion and see where its social impact may be heading.

…on
the one hand, the Web’s elaborate smorgasbord can differentiate even
the subtlest of interests; on the other, it can aggregate people, who
are ordinarily divided geographically, temperamentally, and
socioeconomically, around these interests. In essence, the web’s most unifying traits are simultaneously its most divisive.Of course, pretty much the same thing could be said about any content-neutral technology.

Yet the Internet has accelerated this
aggregating-polarizing tendency so significantly that it arguably
qualifies as a difference in kind, not simply in degree.

I often react badly to people saying that internet is ‘just another channel/medium/network’ and we should be getting too excited. It is like saying a car is ‘just another way of transport’ ignoring the enormity of its impact on how it affects a range of activities and makes entirely new ones possible. The best thing about the internet is that its basic unit is the individual and sothere are endless permutations of ideas and results from their interactions. The blogosphere is just an early expression of this.

TAGS: None