We're Not Alone

By the end of 2004, seven percent of U.S. adults, or more than 8 million people, had written a blog, according to a recent study. Big Boost for Blogs in 2004 [ZDNet.com]. But at the same time, a majority of Americans still do not know what a blog is.

This amusing contradicton was brought home to me last week, at lunch with an old friend. He knew that blog was shorthand for "weblog," but had never seen one and just could not get his arms around the concept that ordinary people now are empowered to write about -- and publish on the Internet -- anything they want. So the blogosphere is gaining traction, but like the Internet itself will take some time before its mysterious DNA is explicable to the casual user. Back in the "old days" of 1994-95, the Web itself was the same way. In other words, everything new is really old!

Not that all this stuff is so great, however. Witness an article today in the New York Times about whacko politico-scientific "theories" for how the War in Iraq actually caused the Southeast Asian tsunamis of last week, i.e., revealing that even faced with real suffering by millions of people on this sphere we call Earth, "the blogosphere's tendency toward crackpot theorizing and political smack down could not be suppressed for long."

 Posted by glenn