Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Great Food For Thought on Blogging
Back in January, Tall Skinny Kiwi put up a sensationalistic post heading about a couple of evangelical celebrities and then contrasted the comment thread with that of a far more impactful post of the day before:
The theory about blogging was a straightforward one - as the printing press was to the democratization of information, so too would blogging be. The invention of the printing press made information more widely available than it ever had been before. We moved from an age with essentially one, maybe two gatekeepers of information (the secular authorities and the church - sometimes the same, sometimes different) to an age of many gatekeepers of information (publishers). Blogging was supposed to do away with informational gatekeepers altogether.
Well, it has done that, but it is still two things 1) media and 2) a meritocracy. The problem has become that in a media-saturated age such as our own - media exceeds content. There is a greater demand for media than there is actual content.
What's your "thing?" In my "thing" - comic books - there is now a gross oversaturation of "coverage." I can know what my favorite artist had for breakfast, what his next six projects are, their deadlines, I can see preview samples, read plot synopsis, find out if his favorite pencil (if he even uses one in this day and age) is yellow or blue, what his girlfriend's name is, and which colorist he will never work with again because he is a "jerk." How much of that is actual content and how much of it is just media horse manure designed to generate buzz designed to increase sales - that is to say trivia, the accumulation of which makes me feel like I am somehow "on the inside?" See, there really is more media than content here.
Subsequently, the "merits" of new media are measured not by the quality of the content, but by the presentation, regardless of content. Not surprising then that as Godblogging has matured it has shallowed. When you combine that with the fact that the community building aspects of blogging have moved to social networking and micro-blogging, something that would drive at least a modicum of traffic to perhaps content rich, even if media poor blogs, the shallowness that Andrew decries becomes almost unremarkable.
Yet, blogging remains the only place where information can be presented without gatekeepers in deeper form. Which reminds me - good information may not find a lot of readers, but if it finds the right readers, who cares. Secondly, once the "gee-whiz" of social networking and micro-blogging wears off I expect them to begin to drive that modicum of traffic back to blogs that are doing good content.
Frankly, there ought to be "linkers" out there in Facebook and Twitter. Remember when blogging was divided into original content providers and those that wrote post after post that said, simply, "Read this stuff," ala Instapundit. Well, someone inside the various virtual networks out there is going to start filling that role, because the demand for deep genuine information, while small, is necessary.
Remember, in the end, Jesus' audience was down to 12 - but that is all it took to change the world.
Technorati Tags:blogging, media, godblogging, depth
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Neither of these are true but I know I would get a gazillion comments on that post. What really sucks is this:I confess to sharing some of Andrew's concern here. It raises an interesting question about blogging - Does media begat media?
My previous post is about one million people deciding to follow Jesus with the assistance of some new web tools and only two people thought it interesting enough to comment on. Sometimes the blogosphere seems very shallow to me. I wonder what tasty pieces of trivial gossip will be served up today?
The theory about blogging was a straightforward one - as the printing press was to the democratization of information, so too would blogging be. The invention of the printing press made information more widely available than it ever had been before. We moved from an age with essentially one, maybe two gatekeepers of information (the secular authorities and the church - sometimes the same, sometimes different) to an age of many gatekeepers of information (publishers). Blogging was supposed to do away with informational gatekeepers altogether.
Well, it has done that, but it is still two things 1) media and 2) a meritocracy. The problem has become that in a media-saturated age such as our own - media exceeds content. There is a greater demand for media than there is actual content.
What's your "thing?" In my "thing" - comic books - there is now a gross oversaturation of "coverage." I can know what my favorite artist had for breakfast, what his next six projects are, their deadlines, I can see preview samples, read plot synopsis, find out if his favorite pencil (if he even uses one in this day and age) is yellow or blue, what his girlfriend's name is, and which colorist he will never work with again because he is a "jerk." How much of that is actual content and how much of it is just media horse manure designed to generate buzz designed to increase sales - that is to say trivia, the accumulation of which makes me feel like I am somehow "on the inside?" See, there really is more media than content here.
Subsequently, the "merits" of new media are measured not by the quality of the content, but by the presentation, regardless of content. Not surprising then that as Godblogging has matured it has shallowed. When you combine that with the fact that the community building aspects of blogging have moved to social networking and micro-blogging, something that would drive at least a modicum of traffic to perhaps content rich, even if media poor blogs, the shallowness that Andrew decries becomes almost unremarkable.
Yet, blogging remains the only place where information can be presented without gatekeepers in deeper form. Which reminds me - good information may not find a lot of readers, but if it finds the right readers, who cares. Secondly, once the "gee-whiz" of social networking and micro-blogging wears off I expect them to begin to drive that modicum of traffic back to blogs that are doing good content.
Frankly, there ought to be "linkers" out there in Facebook and Twitter. Remember when blogging was divided into original content providers and those that wrote post after post that said, simply, "Read this stuff," ala Instapundit. Well, someone inside the various virtual networks out there is going to start filling that role, because the demand for deep genuine information, while small, is necessary.
Remember, in the end, Jesus' audience was down to 12 - but that is all it took to change the world.
Technorati Tags:blogging, media, godblogging, depth
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