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“A blog-with-comments is a piss-poor place to debate matters like the existence of God. It’s not even a good place to debate whether Obama’s stimulus bill is likely to be successful. Blogs just don't do complexity and nuance — which, I think, is why they’re so popular. As everyone knows, the less complex and nuanced the positions on a blog are, the more comments it gets. This is an Iron-Clad Law of the Internet. Blog posts are just too short to deal with the Big Issues, and too likely to be fired off in short order, with minimal reflection and no pre-post feedback from wiser and cooler heads. Andrew Sullivan may think this is a good thing, but I’m not inclined to agree. And of course comments are usually even worse than posts in these respects. Some wonderful conversations happen in blog comment threads, but they happen in spite of the architecture, not because of it. The architecture is fighting thoughtfulness with all its might.”
-- Alan Jacobs
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what they do is open the conversation to those of us who aren't public intellectuals or scholars. The big issues of the day aren't going to be resolved on common blogs, and we aren't even players in the real debates that shape policy and public consciousness. We represent how the debate is sifting down to the street level. A little democracy in action.
And, of course, professional bloggers like Andrew Sullivan do an even better job, bringing more academically skilled intellectualism to his blogging, and actually being a player in the ongoing national debates, helping to make the issues accessible to us, so we can throw around the ball a little among ourselves, and hence people become more informed on the issues, even if not on a truly intellectual level.
This is also in line with how I don't see blogs as a competitor against the mainstream media, but an adjunct to it, an arena in which to carry on the conversations that they start, and which they fuel with their professional reporting and their information.
I just don't see why there is so much defensiveness against blogs. Indeed, I have been under the impression that fewer people are writing or reading in the blogosphere anyway, that it is a cultural fad that has already crested and is falling, leaving in its wake the true enthusiasts.
-- Alan Jacobs
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what they do is open the conversation to those of us who aren't public intellectuals or scholars. The big issues of the day aren't going to be resolved on common blogs, and we aren't even players in the real debates that shape policy and public consciousness. We represent how the debate is sifting down to the street level. A little democracy in action.
And, of course, professional bloggers like Andrew Sullivan do an even better job, bringing more academically skilled intellectualism to his blogging, and actually being a player in the ongoing national debates, helping to make the issues accessible to us, so we can throw around the ball a little among ourselves, and hence people become more informed on the issues, even if not on a truly intellectual level.
This is also in line with how I don't see blogs as a competitor against the mainstream media, but an adjunct to it, an arena in which to carry on the conversations that they start, and which they fuel with their professional reporting and their information.
I just don't see why there is so much defensiveness against blogs. Indeed, I have been under the impression that fewer people are writing or reading in the blogosphere anyway, that it is a cultural fad that has already crested and is falling, leaving in its wake the true enthusiasts.
