Just can't leave it alone I've already overcommented on the Burningbird: Boys with Toys thread (and related) at BurningBird, but I went back and read the three entries and their tails of comments again and I still feel that the various points of view are largely talking past each other, partly because they (we) are also having a metaconversation.
The metaconversation is about what should be the subject of the primary conversation.
One view: "The numbers show that some will get (rich and) famous but most won't."
Another: "The most interesting thing about blogging is not that the most popular blogs are also the most influential blogs."
"The behaviors of any large group of people or things can always be described mathematically."
"That's phenomenal. So what."
No one is really disagreeing that there will be extremely influential blogs that may become commercially viable media entities in their own right. There are already professional writers being paid to blog and some break-even blog enterprises.
I interpret the people questioning the premise of the original article as saying, in part, "You're missing the point by viewing this phenomenon through the lens of success/failure and commercial viability."
When someone like Tim O'Reilly chimes in to say that Clay is right. This does really happen. A small number of weblogs will become influential mass media outlets. 'Twas ever thus, and so on. The "talking past each other" continues.
This is probably a irreconcilable argument, alternately a total waste of time or some challenging conceptual gymnastics.
Clay suggested people make some predictions about two years from now which we can check in 2005. Maybe some long bets are in order.
I predict that some of these same people (and some we don't know now) will disagree on how to interpret the state of things in 2005 and what may have changed since 2003.
Over in the Blogger Tribe back in December, Phil Wolff asked, "How many blogs will you have in 2006?"
Recently I posted my reply to this question:
Geez, I hope either one blog that's well categorized and able to show/hide info depending on the audience or none, because by then some new technology/media-format we haven't envisioned yet will have supplanted blogs.
I mean blogs are cool and all, but they're just the latest, bestest way to do certain webby internetworky thinky things, and I'm hoping for better, onward, upward, etcward.
The doomsday scenario is that I keep spawning new blogs left and right and keep experimenting with multiple blogging tools and eventually go entirely insane. This may already have occurred.
categories: salonika metablog x-syndicate
3:17:51 PM
say what []Mouthing off Regular readers of this space may have noticed that I seem to be commenting more often on politics and media-coverage of same and less often about blogware and suchlike. I suspect the impending war has focused my thoughts in that direction, or made it much harder to focus my thoughts on the nitty-gritty of webhackery. After all, what's the point of participating in a global conversation if all you're going to do is talk about the mechanics of the conversational substrate?
It might also be related to the regular deadlines in my current project, which I'm not able to discuss publicly yet. This provides an incentive to procrastinate and a disincentive to tread in protected areas.
Some of the recent political or opinion stuff I've enjoyed reading online include the following:
- Orcinus, because I'll take passionate rigorous advocacy over exaggerated screedings any day. In the midst of doing a bang-up job on Coble and the history of the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, David Neiwert recently posted a must-read account of the evolution of the Republican party from his own personal point of view, having grown up in a moderate Republican family.
- Mark Kleiman, whose coolly reasoned liberalism tempers some of the more shrill bleatings from the left edge of the 'sphere
- Brad deLong's well documented economic arguments, again from a moderate-left perspective (people tend to forget that Krugman's history seemed fairly centrist in terms of economics before he began his campaign of tilting against extreme windwills)
- For intellectually honest libertarian-style conservatism with a dash of linguistic debate, give me the Volokh Conspiracy group blog.
- When my leftish leaning yearn for some read meat, I reach for Zizka: Le Blagueur Superbe's unabashed partisanship
- As an antidote to the anti-European caricatures abounding in warblogs today, a dose of D-squared Digest (especially the cruel but smart Shorter Steven den Beste feature) does the trick.
- For over-the-top, you can't beat Neal Pollack's The Maelstrom.
(And yes, o imaginary copyeditors, I realize my bullets are not parallel. Live with it.)
categories: metablog
9:22:18 AM say what []
