What Difference Does Blogging Make?

Dave Winer threw in the monkey wrench yesterday afternoon by asking this question. The short answer is "It makes a difference to me, so who cares what you think?"

The long answer is an extension of the same. But let me bring in a tangent from a German dude who put a question to Ambra re: my blogmeme about 100 things:

I don't want to be a killjoy here, but what is the American obsession with America? I may be German, but my dialog rarely has anything to do with Germany as an entity. My contact with Americans has mostly been through online forums, so this may not reflect the reality, but it seems to me that Americans are very self consious. If anyone mentions some 3rd world country, an American liberal will pipe in - it's Americas fault, we armed the militia, we supported the junta or something similar.

If an issue of race, for example in South Africa, is brought up - some American will immediately draw the conversation back the race issues in _your_ country. Most Americans, even those that hate America, seem to think that the world revolves around America.

I've never been there. My sister was, and she said she went on a train, arrived somewhere, and there were ONLY black people there. That was shocking. That a single city can be so segregated that areas are only of one ethnicity. That's the one thing I hate about America, and love about Germany. We blacks in Germany are like chocolate sprinkles on a vanilla cake - spread out everywhere, but in small quantities.

Jay Rosen says that the ethics of blogging starts with the way that people establish trust. There are a set of expectations between the writer and the reader that once established are an organic set of ethics. Where he was leading with this didn't get completely spelled out but as the conference has moved forward, I have come to some preliminary conclusions.

One of those conclusions came today in the 'Outsider Blogging' seminar, one that got sidetracked a bit by a touch of obnoxiousness. But one of the many points that was made, one that stood out was that the 'blogosphere' itself is something of a problem. That is to say, as I've mentioned in The Mystery of the Black Blogger, that there is resistance to concept of blogging and the environment of the blogosphere by outsiders because what they want from the internet tools are different than what 'white males' may be using for currently.

So the issue is that blogs are blogocentric. And in the context of an America-fixated America, there is a great deal of lost potention with regard to attention spans. We are all talking to ourselves about ourselves, and because we all think we are somebody, that's good enough for us. The blogosphere is a mirror, an American mirror, and who gets a word in edgewise? Few.

But you know what? That's OK, which is the short answer above. Which raises the question about why the question was raised. That goes to Dave Winer.

I've decided that Dave Winer is an ass. He's not a dumbass and I don't think he's a smartass, but the assness is clearly evident. He has an uncanny ability to speak the obvious in such a way that it makes him appear to be unthoughtful, where he clearly is a thoughtful man. After having heard him jump into about 4 different conversations, often unbidden, it is clear to me that in group situations, he rubs me the wrong way. I'm not the only one. Perhaps it is that he thinks the rest of us are not quite as thoughtful... whatver. If he has a redeeming quality it is that at least he's not a pompous ass. I've known that Winer is a voodoo doll, a magnet for criticism, and now I'v met the man, I'm going to have to read it. I made the damned fool decision to suggest that he might be interested in coding XRepublic. What was I thinking? That's beside the point, if I were really so dedicated to it, I'd be coding instead of blogging, which I am not. Blogging, for the moment, is what's important.

I understand that the primary problem with blogging is that it is not collaborative. It doesn't generate consensus. But that's about it. How much consensus do we need mediated by computer spaces? We've gotten along fairly well without it for the history of humanity. Nobody knows how to properly abstract all of this monologuing anyway. It's all so much reading material - a new library. Nobody would suggest that libraries be limited until one finds a way to summarize and parse the facts presented therein. And so there you have it. Blogging is a writer's domain and it works for the readers. That's all it needs to be.