December 2, 2004

Blogs that actually think  

Yglesias writes about blogs as a new medium for think tankery, and the idea seems to be going around. He doesn't say so explicitly, but the most important point here is one he's made before: that it's not the medium that matters so much as what's being said. I do think blogs reduce transaction costs for some kinds of communication, especially when there's frequently new information to incorporate (ie news); but it would be silly to suggest that more than a handful of bloggers out there are think tank worthy, or that the sensationalistic way memes spread through the blogosphere would be at all conducive to good research...

Meanwhile Mark Glaser (via Personal Democracy Forum) envisions a new participatory media that sounds an awful lot like Blogosphere 2, this time with rules. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around some of the practicalities of these ideas, but naturally I find them attractive and tempting. I'm also struck by how utopian (ie planned) all of it is -- we're talking about a grand experiment in open source media, and yet the structure has to be carefully masterminded. I guess the larger open source medium -- the internet itself -- is too chaotic?

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