1. The Blog is a Journal, and Online Journalism is Our Game: ‘Journal’ is a very inclusive term, and broadly means ‘daily writings’, and journalists are therefore those who write (or photograph) daily. A diary is a journal, and so is a distinguished medical publication (though the latter is often a monthly, and hence more accurately an anthology or review). So everyone from the author of minutiae of a teenager’s life written for a handful of friends, to a prolific daily poster of articles read by thousands, is an online journalist. That’s what blogging is, and to attempt to categorize it or restrict it or define it more narrowly is to miss the point. Our tradition goes back centuries, from the writers of regular letters to the poets who wrote from the bunkers of wars to the pamphleteers whose work was critical to the emergence of democracy around the world, we are all journalists, pure and simple daily writers. The fact that our writing is online makes it more accessible but that is all. It is no new phenomenon or quantum leap, merely the rediscovery by many of the joy of composing paragraphs of fact and fiction and sharing them with others.
2. We Are Our Own Content Providers, and 5. It’s All About What The Big Media Aren’t Talking About: All information has spin. The 2004 elections in the US and elsewhere made it clear that the mainstream media, and bloggers, all have a bias in what they present, and, more importantly, what they don’t present. It is no coincidence that when citizens are asked what the most important issues of the time are, they mostly parrot what the mainstream media are reporting on. For those on the other side of the digital divide, they don’t really have a choice — other than person-to-person conversations, they have no way to get information on the things that are important to them personally that the mainstream media don’t cover. In fact they often don’t even think about these as political issues. When Gallup gives people the ten choices of issues to pick the ‘most important’ from, citizens tend to pick the one on the list that they relate to most personally — with unemployment, health care and education usually topping the list. But even in the very rare cases when issues like the environment, peace and civil liberties are raised in these surveys, they are described using these abstract and impersonal terms, rather than terms like ‘clean air, water and food’, ‘resolving conflicts peacefully’, ‘workplace safety’, ‘safe, affordable quality schools’ and ‘protecting privacy & other personal freedoms’. So because these hard-to-capture-on-video issues aren’t mentioned in surveys of the masses, the mainstream media are vindicated for continuing to ignore them, and the vicious cycle of ignorance is complete. This, of course, is where bloggers come in, to fill the void. Maybe that’s why the mainstream media are trying to pre-discredit us as ‘a million guys in pajamas‘. 6. Blogs’ as Echo Chambers, or Not: The failure of the left side of the blogosphere to see that Dean would lose the primary, and that Kerry would lose the election, led many to see the blogosphere as an echo chamber, where like minds (falsely) reassured like minds. But guys like Dave Weinberger disagree, and point out that compared to the mainstream media, or the cloister that filters news for the US Presnit, blogs are pretty open-minded. Does the blogosphere open up people to new ideas or solidify what they already believe and close them off from other points of view? I’ve argued that people tend to make up their minds once on each issue, and then look for reassurance and only change their initial opinion when they directly experience first-hand conflicting evidence. So blogs can be helpful in allowing people to make up their minds in the first place, and, as long as they are critical thinkers, giving them reassurance that supports those views. Nothing wrong with that. And just because blogs aren’t likely to change many minds (written material rarely does by itself) and may allow non-critical thinkers to go on believing foolish things (kinda like Fox News), doesn’t invalidate their benefits. 7. Bloggers’ Need to Get Out and Investigate More: The most important kind of journalism, the kind that brings real change, is investigative journalism. Blogging is perfectly suited to this challenge, because it requires people out in the community to invest significant personal time and energy in things they care about (since it incurs risks, and pays poorly). The mainstream media have curtained investigative journalism for that reason (libel suits and expensive research budgets don’t impress media conglomerates’ shareholders). There are some fledgling groups trying to organize bloggers as investigative journalists. They are not cowed by the harrowing experiences of the courageous journalists in Into the Buzzsaw. But in order to provide this value, bloggers need to get away from their comfortable computers and do some things that, to many, will be very uncomfortable: Getting first-hand accounts and taking photos of unpleasant things in unpleasant places, writing up exposes that will incite the wrath of the rich and powerful (and their lawyers), doggedly pursuing the truth in the face of lies, evasion, and bureaucracy. It’s a lot harder than sitting and writing about things second-hand, but if we are to be credible, it’s vital. 8. Information Is Still Trying to be Free, and Keeping Journalists Poor: Marshall McLuhan’s deliberately ambiguous statement “Information is always trying to be free” is great news for the consumers of content, but bad news for those who try to make a living from it. Freelance journalists have been starving for generations, and blogging has created thousands of online journalists with a secret desire to make a living from writing. It’s a classical case of a business with low entrance barriers and not even Shirky’s Power Law, which would suggest A-list bloggers with a wildly disproportionate share of readers should be able to make a buck from writing, has made it easier. Several recent articles have suggested that blogging is poised to make a breakthrough to profitability, but I’m skeptical — with so much information available for free, why would anyone in their right mind pay for it? And the argument that advertising will make the difference, that companies will pay for eyeballs, especially if they’re in their ‘target demographic’ are equally uncompelling, because ‘broadcast’ advertising is anathema to the whole idea of the Internet where everything is customized and one-to-one. If bloggers really want to make money, they’re going to have to do it face-to-face with people who are impressed with their writing, and follow the advice of successful consultants: Give content (ideas, surveys, stories) away free, and charge for the add-ons, for effectively implementing them for the customer. As Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell can tell you, that’s where the value is. 9. The Silence of the Web as Negative Assurance: Dave Weinberger explains why, in the absence of much positive evidence, he’s inclined to believe that Bush was wired for the first debate with Kerry because despite everyone talking about the story on the blogosphere there were no plausible other explanations for the bulge. It’s the same logic that led intelligent people to ‘know’ the unknowable — that there were no WMD in Iraq. In professional auditing circles it’s called ‘negative assurance’, and it means that sometimes you believe what you do in the absence of any compelling evidence to the contrary, if a lot of people have had the opportunity to proffer such contrary evidence. Auditors send out letters of ‘negative confirmation’ of account balances to their clients’ customers with the request that they be returned with corrections only if they’re incorrect. This is not as comforting as ‘positive confirmations’ where a written, signed response is required of each customer, but it’s much better than nothing, and usually very effective. So the vast blogosphere provides negative assurance of facts and declarations made by politicians and other vested interests, in the absence of any compelling contrary evidence from bloggers who would be positively disposed to tabling such information if it existed. Further evidence of the Wisdom of Crowds, and comforting in places where the media tend to treat press conferences and press releases as ‘facts’ needing no corroboration, question or inquiry. 10. The Ultimate Utility of Blogging: Last, but certainly not least, is this remarkable statement from blogger Rob Paterson on the utility of blogging: “The utility of blogging to me is that it is recreating the lost world of a humanity that is connected to itself and hence to everything.” Rob and I and a group of bloggers have been working on a compendium of our best and most important work, and we’ve been exchanging ideas on a theme or shared vision for the book. I suggested that, if it’s going to sell, the book needs to have utility to the reader, especially the reader who barely knows what a blog (or online journalism) is. Rob identified three ‘values’ of blogging to him personally: Finding one’s voice; Noticing what gives and what drains one’s energy; Redefining the meaning of work as a function of community and fellowship instead of wage slavery. So he’s saying, and I agree with him, that blogging (the participation in the conversation as both a journal reader and writer) re-centres you, frees you from being like, and seeing the world like, everyone else, and allows you to see the world and yourself differently, more profoundly (for better and for worse), and hence to liberate yourself and take charge of your own life. Self-awareness, self-reliance, and the personal liberation that comes from deep knowledge. Could there possibly be a higher utility for anything? Coming up later this month: My Ten Most Important Ideas lists for politics & economics, and for business. |
Navigation
Collapsniks
Albert Bates (US)
Andrew Nikiforuk (CA)
Brutus (US)
Carolyn Baker (US)*
Catherine Ingram (US)
Chris Hedges (US)
Dahr Jamail (US)
Dean Spillane-Walker (US)*
Derrick Jensen (US)
Dougald & Paul (IE/SE)*
Erik Michaels (US)
Gail Tverberg (US)
Guy McPherson (US)
Honest Sorcerer
Janaia & Robin (US)*
Jem Bendell (UK)
Mari Werner
Michael Dowd (US)*
Nate Hagens (US)
Paul Heft (US)*
Post Carbon Inst. (US)
Resilience (US)
Richard Heinberg (US)
Robert Jensen (US)
Roy Scranton (US)
Sam Mitchell (US)
Tim Morgan (UK)
Tim Watkins (UK)
Umair Haque (UK)
William Rees (CA)
XrayMike (AU)
Radical Non-Duality
Tony Parsons
Jim Newman
Tim Cliss
Andreas Müller
Kenneth Madden
Emerson Lim
Nancy Neithercut
Rosemarijn Roes
Frank McCaughey
Clare Cherikoff
Ere Parek, Izzy Cloke, Zabi AmaniEssential Reading
Archive by Category
My Bio, Contact Info, Signature Posts
About the Author (2023)
My Circles
E-mail me
--- My Best 200 Posts, 2003-22 by category, from newest to oldest ---
Collapse Watch:
Hope — On the Balance of Probabilities
The Caste War for the Dregs
Recuperation, Accommodation, Resilience
How Do We Teach the Critical Skills
Collapse Not Apocalypse
Effective Activism
'Making Sense of the World' Reading List
Notes From the Rising Dark
What is Exponential Decay
Collapse: Slowly Then Suddenly
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Making Sense of Who We Are
What Would Net-Zero Emissions Look Like?
Post Collapse with Michael Dowd (video)
Why Economic Collapse Will Precede Climate Collapse
Being Adaptable: A Reminder List
A Culture of Fear
What Will It Take?
A Future Without Us
Dean Walker Interview (video)
The Mushroom at the End of the World
What Would It Take To Live Sustainably?
The New Political Map (Poster)
Beyond Belief
Complexity and Collapse
Requiem for a Species
Civilization Disease
What a Desolated Earth Looks Like
If We Had a Better Story...
Giving Up on Environmentalism
The Hard Part is Finding People Who Care
Going Vegan
The Dark & Gathering Sameness of the World
The End of Philosophy
A Short History of Progress
The Boiling Frog
Our Culture / Ourselves:
A CoVid-19 Recap
What It Means to be Human
A Culture Built on Wrong Models
Understanding Conservatives
Our Unique Capacity for Hatred
Not Meant to Govern Each Other
The Humanist Trap
Credulous
Amazing What People Get Used To
My Reluctant Misanthropy
The Dawn of Everything
Species Shame
Why Misinformation Doesn't Work
The Lab-Leak Hypothesis
The Right to Die
CoVid-19: Go for Zero
Pollard's Laws
On Caste
The Process of Self-Organization
The Tragic Spread of Misinformation
A Better Way to Work
The Needs of the Moment
Ask Yourself This
What to Believe Now?
Rogue Primate
Conversation & Silence
The Language of Our Eyes
True Story
May I Ask a Question?
Cultural Acedia: When We Can No Longer Care
Useless Advice
Several Short Sentences About Learning
Why I Don't Want to Hear Your Story
A Harvest of Myths
The Qualities of a Great Story
The Trouble With Stories
A Model of Identity & Community
Not Ready to Do What's Needed
A Culture of Dependence
So What's Next
Ten Things to Do When You're Feeling Hopeless
No Use to the World Broken
Living in Another World
Does Language Restrict What We Can Think?
The Value of Conversation Manifesto Nobody Knows Anything
If I Only Had 37 Days
The Only Life We Know
A Long Way Down
No Noble Savages
Figments of Reality
Too Far Ahead
Learning From Nature
The Rogue Animal
How the World Really Works:
Making Sense of Scents
An Age of Wonder
The Truth About Ukraine
Navigating Complexity
The Supply Chain Problem
The Promise of Dialogue
Too Dumb to Take Care of Ourselves
Extinction Capitalism
Homeless
Republicans Slide Into Fascism
All the Things I Was Wrong About
Several Short Sentences About Sharks
How Change Happens
What's the Best Possible Outcome?
The Perpetual Growth Machine
We Make Zero
How Long We've Been Around (graphic)
If You Wanted to Sabotage the Elections
Collective Intelligence & Complexity
Ten Things I Wish I'd Learned Earlier
The Problem With Systems
Against Hope (Video)
The Admission of Necessary Ignorance
Several Short Sentences About Jellyfish
Loren Eiseley, in Verse
A Synopsis of 'Finding the Sweet Spot'
Learning from Indigenous Cultures
The Gift Economy
The Job of the Media
The Wal-Mart Dilemma
The Illusion of the Separate Self, and Free Will:
No Free Will, No Freedom
The Other Side of 'No Me'
This Body Takes Me For a Walk
The Only One Who Really Knew Me
No Free Will — Fightin' Words
The Paradox of the Self
A Radical Non-Duality FAQ
What We Think We Know
Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark
Healing From Ourselves
The Entanglement Hypothesis
Nothing Needs to Happen
Nothing to Say About This
What I Wanted to Believe
A Continuous Reassemblage of Meaning
No Choice But to Misbehave
What's Apparently Happening
A Different Kind of Animal
Happy Now?
This Creature
Did Early Humans Have Selves?
Nothing On Offer Here
Even Simpler and More Hopeless Than That
Glimpses
How Our Bodies Sense the World
Fragments
What Happens in Vagus
We Have No Choice
Never Comfortable in the Skin of Self
Letting Go of the Story of Me
All There Is, Is This
A Theory of No Mind
Creative Works:
Mindful Wanderings (Reflections) (Archive)
A Prayer to No One
Frogs' Hollow (Short Story)
We Do What We Do (Poem)
Negative Assertions (Poem)
Reminder (Short Story)
A Canadian Sorry (Satire)
Under No Illusions (Short Story)
The Ever-Stranger (Poem)
The Fortune Teller (Short Story)
Non-Duality Dude (Play)
Your Self: An Owner's Manual (Satire)
All the Things I Thought I Knew (Short Story)
On the Shoulders of Giants (Short Story)
Improv (Poem)
Calling the Cage Freedom (Short Story)
Rune (Poem)
Only This (Poem)
The Other Extinction (Short Story)
Invisible (Poem)
Disruption (Short Story)
A Thought-Less Experiment (Poem)
Speaking Grosbeak (Short Story)
The Only Way There (Short Story)
The Wild Man (Short Story)
Flywheel (Short Story)
The Opposite of Presence (Satire)
How to Make Love Last (Poem)
The Horses' Bodies (Poem)
Enough (Lament)
Distracted (Short Story)
Worse, Still (Poem)
Conjurer (Satire)
A Conversation (Short Story)
Farewell to Albion (Poem)
My Other Sites
Great, great post. Almost a manifesto in tone.(I marvel at your productivity!)
I agree with everything you’ve said. Great post. But I think visually we need to think in terms of networks rather than pyramids. Functionally, blogs, bloggers and 21st century people work and communicate in networks rather than pyramids.
Firas: Thanks. William: You’re absolutely right — I changed the lower pyramid to a network — thanks for the idea.
Dave, Fantastic post! Regarding # 3… have you ever read ‘The Second Coming’, by David Gelernter?http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter/gelernter_p1.htmlIt was written some years ago, but is still a fantastic piece.
Good insights. Looking forward to the rest of this series. I’ve been thinking a good deal about the nature of the web ecosystem myself and I appreciate other viewpoints.