Claptrap about Blogs

Canada's Favorite Blog

Posted by Alan McLeod on Friday, May 23, 2003 in Web, Blogging and Computers - leave a comment

Via this blog, I came across this guy giving a speech for the Blogtalk conference this weekend in Vienna. My teeth ached. A few reasons why:

How can a 600 million people have a conversation about anything - the units of conversation are small.
These small units are not relationships or communities. At best they are something between a party and a meeting of hobbiests on a topic even if that topic is the discussion itself
There is nothing new about this. Blogs are merely monitored bulletin boards meeting better browsers which avoid the downsides of user groups.
Isn't it really weird having a conference about blogging. Aside from the general "dancing about architecture" thing, doesn't it point out the absences in blogs - that you need to phyically get together to discuss them meaningfully.

Don't get me wrong. They are doing the right thing getting together in Austria. You may like someone's ideas but you will not have a relationship unless you meet them so as to see their facial expression, find out if they are a smelly close talker or whether they are dismissive of you physically while apparently being interested in their choice of words. You do not have a community until you have to figure out what to do with the other guy's kids noisy drum practices on the weekend or how to deal with sewage. Communities have obligations, trade-offs, achievement. Maybe some folk will come back from the conference thinking - what a dork.

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