Anil has crafted a nuanced piece, The Blog Cycle, that attempts to puncture various myths and memes in the world of blogging. But I'm not so sure...
[from
The Blog Cycle]
- "First, it's important to note that there is no "blogosphere". There are hundreds of blogospheres. Each sub-community of weblogs has its own social norms, its own traditions and its own thought leaders. And as each community has formed and evolved, you can see it go through a few common steps as it evolves as a medium."
Hmmm. True to an extent; however, since all of these subcultures are being shaped by the same social tools -- blogs -- which are increasingly converging toward a standard suite of features, there are core set of blogosphere norms that have emerged. Think of trackbacks, blogrolls, and so on. More importantly, even though the differences between the various blog subcultures may seem obvious and relevant to insiders, to outsiders they all blur to insignificance. And there is a lot more of the outsiders than the insiders. And they are going to become more and more alike, I believe.
Where are the women/minorities? We've been going through this one again lately in the tech blogging realm, and to a lesser degree I've seen it flare up with political blogs. Interestingly, it's mostly a problem in technology and political blogs, though the most popular members of those communities are loathe to admit it. Other huge and growing communities, like knitters, food bloggers, baby bloggers, and corporate/PR bloggers don't seem to have nearly as much of a problem being blind to identity when linking to or quoting from others.
This is really a discussion about power, not diversity, per se. As bloggers become to become mainstream and not just fringe lunatics muttering in tiny cabals, power will concentrate according to network power laws. Anil is famous for demonstrating the power in his blog's reach by getting a gazillion folks to link to a post of his, and winning a context as a result.
So Halley's recent call to action about new voices (which may be one of the influences for Anil's posting) is about intentionally inviting women and minorities into the emerging spheres of power in the blogosphere. Knitting and babies have traditionally been the province of women, and blogs about traditionally female subjects can be viewed as ghettoes in the blogosphere, no matter how fullfilling they may be for the individuals there.
[By the way, I think I have three of my ten new voices... need to scare up seven more, and at least four of those need to be non-American, to meet the letter of Halley's challenge. Pointers?]
You'll get fired! If you read my site, you probably already know my feelings on the subject, but suffice to say each new community has its own backlash on this, especially as people try to find scaremongering ideas to use as the hook for press coverage.
This is a topic where I really disagree with Anil. There is a growing tide of social conformism that is stifling individual free speech (see the pieces on Niall Kennedy, here), as well as ample evidence that dozens of folks have been sacked for blogging (or through actions manifested on blogs), like Morpheme Tales (Curt Hopkins) roster of fired bloggers.
So, to recap my disagreements: People are being fired because of blogging, there is an inherent power structure built into the nature of scale free networks (like the blogosphere) so that power concentrates, and because the various separate blogospheres that Anil alludes to actually do all exist on one Internet, not as private worlds, there is really just one blogosphere. In the end, I believe that Anil is trying to play down any controversy around blogs, so that prospective users will not be alarmed or concerned, and so they can therefore more quickly gain the benefits that blogs offer. That is all well and good, but we shouldn't suppress the debate around these issues, or dismiss their root causes as simply not existing, just to make blogs less controversial and threatening.
