- Merriam-Webster said the word "blog" was #1 Word of the Year for 2004.
- Microsoft launched Spaces, its belated entry to the blogosphere. The rest of the world yawned.
- The Washington Post ran this piece, Images of Fighting in Fallujah Compel at Different Levels, in its Sunday edition.
The ability of a given entity to control the entire messaging space - an ability which has been eroding for generations - has become that much more diluted as the distributed Internet has given birth to commonly-available tools.
The resulting messages, as evidenced in this piece, are stunningly different. Think about that for a second as you consider how many of us typically take whatever we see at face value. Maybe it's time to rethink our media gullibility.
Beyond the current situation in Iraq, this evolution has broad implications for governments everywhere. How much longer can China, for example, keep its own people in the dark? Cuba? Name your own autocratic state here, then mark my words: sooner or later, technology will do to these regimes what generations of tanks and guns ultimately failed to accomplish. At least that's what I'd like to think - I guess I'm too much of an idealist.
I'll descend from my political soapbox now. What does your soapbox have to say?
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2 comments:
The whole thing is fascinating. You've set my thoughts racing again, although whether or not I'll have time to do anything with them is up in the air.
Well, no, it isn't really. I won't have time to address the subject properly.
In any event, we are experiencing the broadening of information sources, where information comes through broader and looser filters. Critics will point out that much of it is crap, but I contend that this was always true. The difference was that 50 years ago, few people questioned the crap because they had no alternate sources of information.
And because times were different. My mother still believes everything she sees on the nightly news. I avoid TV news because it's crappy. Crappy in the inaccurate sense, I mean.
I'm off to read that WP article now. If nothing else, the war in Iraq has been a laboratory for people interested in the structure of information.
What's up with Microsoft? It's about 30 years late to everything lately? And to think it used to be the innovator in all things technological. Hmmm...
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