Stephen Downes

I agree with the pundits, blogging isn't really about conversation any more. There was a time when it would have been interesting to map the links from one blog to the next to the next. Now they hardly link to each other at all. Blogging is now more about self-promoters, marketing, news, and some personal reflection. It's not all bad, and it remains pretty much the only place to find a decent thought longer than 140 characters. But it's not, as Hugh McLeod says, "'smaller', 'clubbier', intimate and, well, human. When the people I met were truly like-minded." That's not necessarily a bad thing; I never liked the 'clubby' aspects of the blogosphere. It's a new thing. Life, however short on the net, goes on.