Blog Eats Blog
Bill Thompson,
Spiked IT,
May 16, 2003
Last week's O'Reilly Emerging Technologies conference demonstrated the power of a few 'elite' bloggers (thus confirmed by link counts and Google page-rank) and a mass of chaotic, confused and contradictory coverage, complains the author, "a seamless and essentially author-free porridge of commentary - lacking substance, structure or meaning." What is needed, he argues, is the controlling and mediating influence of journalists - and correspondingly, some means of holding the blogging elites to account. Of course, this is exactly the same sort of thing some people say about learning on the web: that unless it is structured and organized, it is incomprehensible and uncontrolled. All that is very fine, and I think a valid point has been made. But essentially the same argument can be made of the current system. Any discipline - whether it be philosophy, government, economics or business administration - really is that chaotic. An elite of journalists or professors does emerge to create clarity and order. But the blogging elite is at least, after a fashion, elected. Oh, and the critics do get an airing. Far more than you might think.
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