Earlier this week a blogger put his foot in his mouth and a very interesting conversation has been triggered. Ruks wrote the unfortunate sentence "Why do we need Rob?" asking why would you need a university summer course to discuss blogging and other new ideas in communication. Rob responded with the shorter question "Why?" as in "why me" and "why be so mean", etc. The ensuing and sadly classic retraction without apology was issued, followed by a flood of change-the-subject posts. Craig, in passing, looks at some of the style involved. Steve takes what might be of value in the non-apology and writes a very interesting post indicting his belief that the internet is a conduit for a new opportunity in ideas. He is apparently operating under the misconception that a/v geeks were introduced as a concept in the movie Revenge of the Nerds but that is fine.

What is most interesting to me is that the original question was not what people, other than Steve, responded to - most reacted to how it was said, off-handishly rude. Steve rather took interest in the core ideas really both Rob and Ruk state, being that the internet has the promise to provide the unhierarchical access to thought. Sadly, what no one noted and Steven I think fails to appreciate (though that may be the wrong way of saying that) is that the internet has so far failed on that promise and that that promise is not unique to the internet. Radio and TV and even Penguin (fiction) and Pelican (non-fiction) books in the 1930s - when they were bought by my socialist Scots politician Grannie weekly as they were issued like Harliquin Romances - all were heralded as a means to democratized and deinstitutionalize eduation. Queens University here in Kingston had an early radio license as an early adopter of radical technology. CHFX in Antigonish was part of St. FX's Jeffersonian and also socialist dream of education for the population. Mr. Rogers was part of the heralding of early childhood education scheme that never really branched out beyond PBS.

But then think about it. What was the world like before Penguin and CHFX and Mr. Rogers? Drastically different than today. These examples of mass media used by the vast majority of the population were as radical a change in the mid-1900s as the advent of censor-avoiding independent pamphlets and the pre-cursors to newspapers were in the 1700s. The internet has honestly yet to achieve this level of popular importance - unless you not that the failure of most to access it globally is important in the sense of their deprivation (hence the glory that truly is the BBC World Service combined with wind-up or cheap transistor radios). While stats will tell you that "X"% of the population uses the internet, we all know that there is using and using. The guy in the office who ask administrative assistants to find something on the internet are not using. eBay is really still only a digital yard sale or church jumble. It may and likely will become pervasive but is not yet and will do so in a form not yet recognized. Needless to say, it ain't yet TV.

If Rob were able to discuss all that in a structured course with good back-up resources and run it on-line on a blog we pay 5 bucks a month to access through a password, I might join in. Ruk even might, too.