A great article by George Packer, a regular writer for the New Yorker, about the poltical impact of blogs and his own love-hate relationship with the new populist medium. In fact, his only negative attitude about blogs seems to be he finds them so fascinating that he gets sucked into them for hours at a time, which is, I believe, familiar to many of us.
I take strong objection, however, to the article’s headline. The revolution will so be blogged. In fact, that’s exactly the point. We don’t need it to be televised. TV is controlled by The Man. Blogs are all about The People, baby.
(Whoops, sorry, I forgot for a minute this is supposed to be a serious business-oriented blog.)
Mother Jones: The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged
It’s tough sticking to just business in your blog, isn’t it? Blogs tend to blur the line between business & our other lives; which gives bloggers a more authentic voice.
Comment by Harold Jarche — April 29, 2004 @ 10:05 am
It is just like it was back in ’96. The revolution will be online. Yeh, right – they said. There was no revolution, not in terms of social or political attitude. But now the web is.. normal. Everyday. Blogs will be too. It won’t be long before the word blog becomes as relevant as ‘information superhighway’, and most people start blogging. Why? The web generally needs scope for self expression as well as access.
Comment by Tim — April 30, 2004 @ 4:24 pm
All business involves human trust. There is no trust between systems and people. Only people to people communication can build trust. Blogs are moe about people-to-people. The whole information establishment talks at or down to the individual. They are smarter than us. They know more than us. They want us to trust them but won’t tell us why.
Comment by Andy — April 30, 2004 @ 4:27 pm
Readers get to know their favourite bloggers as friends. That creates a trust factor that other media can’t match. There is no need for bloggers to attempt to “manufacture” trust. It’s implicit within the blogger-reader relationship. In fact, that’s one of the strengths of the business blog, or any blog for that matter: relationship building.
Comment by Wayne Hurlbert — April 30, 2004 @ 4:38 pm