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| Friday, February 10, 2006 |
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Quote du jour 
The sourceocracy
| | Back after Hurricane Andrew leveled much of Florida, Dave Barry wrote a funny piece about his two dogs. Before the hurricane, they would go to the back porch door and bark at it, begging to be let out. After the hurricane, the back porch was gone, but the door was left standing. Once let outside, the dogs would run to the former porch's door in the middle of the yard and bark at it to be let out again. |
| | In a word, we created some new gatekeepers that we now know at the blogging A-list (and, to some extent, an equivalent B-list and C-list). Membership on it is limited and many have said that the way to disprove the power of the A-list is by showing that new members have appeared on it: what few are willing to admit is that the new members are really only allowed as one of these groups if they are vetted by enough existing members. This creates a self-fulfilling cycle where members of the small club of "blogs that matter" get to shape the agenda. |
| | We've heard a lot about this before. I'll grant that there's a power-law curve, as Clay Shirky was perhaps the first to point out. But the notion of "membership" is a stretch at best. Clubbiness? As David Weinberger said yesterday, There's lots to discuss there. I find the question of the "clubby atmosphere" to be especially compelling. But the Internet blew away the porches of membership. You don't need to bark at a door you can just as easily walk around. |
| | True, there are some echo chambers — notably around politics, as Valdis Krebs demonstrated so well a couple years back. But tech? Or any specialized topic? |
| | Among topics I pay the most attention to here (the Net, snowballing, podcasting, and disruption in general, to name a very few current ones), the topics are the first filter. Sources are second. And there the writing matters more than the writer. If you don't know me, you stand a better chance of getting pointed to in my blog if you write something interesting (and syndicated) about a subject I'm caring about, than by belonging to any particular "club," including the blogroll on the right, which I check less and less often. |
| | You also stand a good chance if you simply send me an email (as Tristan did) or mention my name in a post (because I subscribe to feeds of searches for that, in addition to a variety of keyword searches). |
| | Sources do matter, though. The best are the ones that write with originality, knowledge and passion. If you do that, and you credit your sources, prefereably with links, you'll get links back. |
| | Programmers like to say "show me the code". Here the equivalent is "show me the writing". |
| | Tristan closes with a number of questions: |
| | The question, in all this, however, is whether we could be suffering from possible group myopia. What if a rumor is wrong and gets propagated by the gatekeepers? What is that impact? |
| | The reason I am bringing this up is that I'm wondering if, by creating new gatekeepers, we could start creating a level of groupthink and ultimately increase group myopia. As the boundaries of different echo chambers are clearly defined (for example, few people on the left side of the political biosphere interact with people on the right side (and vice-versa)), are we going to see more polarization going forward. |
| | The next question (and I'm not sure but I suspect that the same is true in non-blog media) is how we deal with this? Is there a way to ensure that all voices are given equal weight? Many people say that the problem is self-correcting but it still seems to me that issues could arise that would not only increase the power of top ranked bloggers but also help in force the dialogue in one direction or another. |
| | I do not have answers for this but I hope that this entry will provoke discussion and would like to see what others have to offer as solutions to this problem. On the other hand, if I fail to influence the gatekeepers, I suspect that this entry will disappear into obscurity until a gatekeeper decides to discuss the same issue. |
| | I think the blogosphere is much better at correcting rumors and fixing damage, than the mainstream press. So I don't think that's as much of a problem as Tristan does. |
| | So, like Dr. Weinberger, I think there's a lot to talk about here. But it's more about how to make the most of our independence. |
| | [Later...] Scott Karp characterizes the above as "blogger defensiveness". Scott has an earlier post on "gatekeepers" (which I hadn't seen until now). Lots of good points in both pieces, including many with which I disagree. |
| | Here's the main thing, for me anyway. |
| | I've worked in, and with, countless institutions and organizations that are full of gates and gatekeepers. Exclusive territories. By comparison, blogs are the wide open spaces. Nothing about the blogosphere appeals to me more than the absence, or the ridiculousness, of "gates". |
| | At that last link, Scott closes with, So will it be meet the new boss, same as the old boss" — are we going to get fooled yet again? |
| | Speaking only for myself, I have no interest in meeting, or being, a new boss. And I don't think it's defensive to say that Scott's and Tristan's characterization of my role has no resonance with my experience or aspirations, as a blogger. |
Learning to stop hating customers
Times space
Envying Utah
| | Can somebody please bring Utopia to Santa Barbara? |
Open adaptation, cont'd
A vote for Net neutrality
| | Recently, executives at some telephone companies have indicated that their business models for providing broadband service include not only charging their end-user customers for an Internet connection but also assessing a fee on websites for users to reach them more quickly. They claim that to offer advanced content such as multiple video-programming channels in competition with cable they need to prioritize their bits to deliver quality programs. They then propose that they will give the same priority access to other companies that pay them for it. |
| | Essentially, what these executives are proposing is the creation of a two-lane Internet where larger, more established websites with financial resources could squeeze out smaller, emerging websites. One clear victim will be the innovation that has thrived on the open Internet. Startups simply could not afford to pay for fast-lane treatment nationwide. One must ask where the next Google or Yahoo will come from if new innovative companies can receive only inferior, slow-lane Internet access... |
| | In countries such as Japan and Korea, network speeds over the last mile of 100 megabits per second (mbps) are common. In the United States, our typical speed is less than 1 mbps. If broadband providers would increase their network speeds to approximate those in other countries, all content would reach consumers with assured quality. No prioritization of bits would be needed. |
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