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Re: Friday, August 18, 2006
First, we're all new in blogville, and there are no rules. Second, I don't know who came up with the "A-list" label in respect to the blogosphere; but Technorati's Top 100 made it sort-of official. I was in it for awhile, but am thankfully out of it now. Not that it makes much difference. The label continues to stick. I think the controversy is framed wrong by those who insist that some of us must be victimizing others of us, somewhow. But that's my opinion. I think I'm right. Others think I'm wrong. In retrospect, I should have let Nick's remarks rest. Maybe Dave Rogers' too. Every time I respond to stuff like that, I see no good result. So I should just let it go. There are lots of interesting things to write and talk about. Who's an A-Lister and What They're Doing Wrong are, regardless of where you stand on those topics, among the least useful questions I've encountered in all my time writing this blog. You can tell how useless they are by seeing how far anybody's position has moved, or how far general understanding of the blogosphere, or the Web, or of any larger topic, has advanced. The answer, to me at least, is: not much. How People Can Be Better Heard, however, *is* a worthy topic. So is How People Can Make Progress Moving an Idea or a Cause Forward. I'm more optimistic about those. But that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about how popularity sucks. Also about who sucks and how. Today I went on a geology walk where my kid and I found out a pile of things we didn't know. Just as importantly, we were corrected on some matters that I've misunderstood for years. It was rewarding and humbling as only a proper education in the field can be. Later we sat out and looked at the stars with a laptop open to Starry Night and other sources that helped us understand the size and distance of every object we could see in the sky. In the course of a Q&A with myself and those sources, the kid understood for the first time how our local celestial neighborhood -- Arcturus, Sun, Alpha and Proxima Centuri, Sirius, Altair, Vega, Formalhaut -- may have formed in a nebula much like the Eagle and the Trifid. All of this was far more interesting, and worthy of my time and attention, than staying engaged in public arguments that go nowhere. Or so it seems at 11:09 on a Sunday evening.
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