(www.the-idler.com)
"Read All About It In The Idler"
15 July 2002
Inside the Blogosphere: The Weblog Phenomenon
By Laurence Jarvik
Pyra Labs' Blogger Website
It was rewarding to google 'bloggers accounts of The Idler's June 28th panel at the National Press Club: "Inside the Blogosphere: The Weblog Phenomenon."
While it was naturally disappointing that Glenn Reynolds and James Lileks cancelled due to thunderstorms, airlines, and scratched flights, it was gratifying that they wrote about their experience in their blogs, because that is the Blogosphere in action -- self-referential, self-reflexive, self-analytical, self-correcting, universal, instaneous, decentralized, emotional, rational, and available for continuous updating, response, and review. It shows the strength of the Blogosphere as a network of responses.
In the words of William Quick's January, 2002 posting on DailyPundit:
"I PROPOSE A NAME for the intellectual cyberspace we bloggers occupy: the Blogosphere. Simple enough; the root word is logos, from the Greek meaning, variously: In pre-Socratic philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of this principle, or human reasoning about the cosmos; Among the Sophists, the topics of rational argument or the arguments themselves. .."
The idea was pretty simple: Bring some prominent 'bloggers to Washington to meet the press face-to-face, in a way that would cut through a lot of the hype around blogging. After reading a New York Times story in which technically oriented 'bloggers denounced politically outspoken newcomers like Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds, (one that Reynolds had linked to) we thought it would be useful for Washington, DC based journalists to have first-hand exposure to the people behind the blogs.
So, the first invitation was to Reynolds, perhaps the best-known 'blogger since September 11th, and the internet's biggest phenomenon, at least for the chattering classes, since the emergence of Matt Drudge or Jim Romenesko. He agreed to fly to Washington for the day, and we planned the panel around him.
To complement Reynolds, we picked some blogs linked on his site: James Lileks , Mickey Kaus and James Taranto were invited.
We asked James Taranto, of "Best of the Web" on the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com for one reason: it was a link of his site that first led us to discover Instapundit.
Through a link on Instapundit, we found John Hiler's MicroContentNews.com. He had been writing at length on the history of the blogging,. He agreed to attend, and were grateful that there would be a tech person on the panel to answer any questions of a computer programming nature. (Ironically, it turned out that James Taranto of "Best of the Web," whom we had thought of as a New York intellectual, was in fact an Arizonan who had studied computer programming.)
We had hoped the panel would go beyond politics, taking the discussion to a higher level. It seemed to us that blogging was a very significant cultural phenomenon, perhaps as significant as the development of printing. By making the web easy to use as a mechanism to distribute print, by cutting the cost of production and distribution to essentially zero, blogging fundamentally would alter the relationship among writers, readers, and yes, the middlemen and women who were traditionally the printers, publishers, and editors.
Initially, blogs were for technical people, or for diaries and personal expression, but they rapidly grew into a serious phenomeon, filling in the gaps left by an established media unwilling or perhaps unable to deal with situations that did not fit into their corporate and/or ideological "deep structures."
Yet despite their independence on one level, on another, the blogs were epiphenomena. They depended on the mainstream media, at least for some of their content. After all, Glenn Reynolds and other bloggers operate at a "meta" level, where articles and essays are discussed, examined, refuted, and sometimes mocked.
So we also invited Doug Mclennan of Artsjournal.com, Dennis Loy Johnson of Mobylives.com, and Alice Goldfarb Marquis, a contributor to The Idler. They were not only involved in web publications, but were cultural critics as well, who could put the weblog in a cultural context that had been missing from a great deal of the journalistic coverage.
Although some bloggers complained that there was not enough political talk (a strange complaint, as audience members were free to raise political issues during the hour-and-a-half of spirited discussion following the presentations), we were delighted that the discussion went way beyond politics -- and that there was a lot of debate about the meaning of weblogs in a larger context, looking at a bigger picture.
For example, when we saw James Lilek's account of his airport troubles, right before the event, it seemed that if nothing else, his invitation had resulted in documentation of early 21st-Century American travel, an artifact sure to of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and perhaps even archaeologists of the not-too-distant future. Likewise, when Glenn Reynolds posted his flight cancellation notice it was disappointing, while simultaneously evidence of the utility of Blogosphere. For as a result, we had a new term: "Lileks-ed."
The 'bloggers who attend could not fail to note their disappointment at Reynolds and Lileks' non-appearances in their coverage. It was almost as if Madonna and Britney had failed to show, such was the sighing... And yet the room remained full after the announcment was made. There were 40 seats, and some were standing. For 3 hours. At the end, several wanted to stay, though we had to leave the room.
Of the some 40 people in the John Peter Zenger Room of the National Press Club, at least a dozen had signed in as 'bloggers. How many bloggers were there who had not signed in, one does not know.
And in their own accounts, responses read as far away as Brazil, there was a lot to think about. On Journalismo Digital, Elisabete Barbosa wrote that she had seen panelist John Hiler's story in Microcontent News. Arnold Kling's essay at TechCentralStation was cited on Romenesko's MediaNews. (Kling had another article about the event on Corante's website, John Hiler's publisher.) And in best Blogosphere fashion, 'bloggers linked to one another on blogs such as Tleeves, Combustible Boy (with photos), Tres Producers, WOIFM, i330, Geistbear, and Rosenblog.
Interestingly, what we considered a sympathetic discussion of 'blogging from Alice Marquis clearly upset the 'bloggers the most, as one can see from their published accounts. Perhaps it was her attack on "boosterism."
Yet, contra some of the offended bloggers, she made excellent analytical points, not simply bon mots about "link-stained wretches" and "bloggorhea."
Marquis most telling comparison was to the revolution wrought by Marcel Duchamp, who turned the art-world on its head through his display of "readymades." Just as photography forever changed painting, so did Duchamp's challenge to the artistic powers-that-be. Although discussion of Duchamp's urinal appeared to be taken as an insult by some in the audience, Marquis' comparison was actually a compliment to the medium.
Weblogs are to newspapers, radio, and television stations as the salon de refuses was to the French Academy; or Duchamp to the previous generation of painters in New York, before the Armory show. The blogs are part of a revolutionary moment in American culture. Democratic, heartfelt, and fun.
Likewise, while some 'bloggers carp that Doug McLennan and Dennis Loy Johnson are not true 'bloggers (yet if their sites are not 'blogs in at least one dimension -- logs on the web, with commentary -- what are they?), the speakers had a keen understanding of what 'blogs are and what they have the potential to become.
McLennan pointed out that Weblogs have what establishment media no longer have, the passion, point-of-view, and personal sensibility that generate true engagement with the public. "Who wants to read passionless stories?" he asked, noting that the best bloggers could be seen in the same light as great columnists. He suggested that 'blogging rips away the "veil of objectivity" surrounding much establishment media, that weblogs reveal there are more than two sides to any story, that there are multiple sides, and multiple perspectives, making the world a much more interesting place, where the blogger makes personal sense of information. He also pointed out that a lot of stuff on the web was B.S.
And while Johnson disagreed about the objectivity issue, saying he tries to be objective in his work, he came up with perhaps the best line of the day, when during the question and answer session he recalled the advice of an ex-hippie: "Don't burn out, man. Pace yourself." That is the issue facing all 'bloggers, how to keep going, day in and day out, with a flood of thoughts, feelings, inspirations, and expression. Johnson's advice: take a break.
John Hiler's commentary on the "dark side of blogging" was insightful as well. The dangers of "pouring gasoline on the ego" that comes from instantaneous publication to a worldwide audience, the need to consider blogging a form of addiction, were thought-provoking.
And of course, last but certainly not least, James Taranto made an important point just by his presence. He gets paid for doing a weblog! By a big company! And it gets readers for the company! Not only that he helps other weblogs -- like Instapundit -- when he directs his thousands of regular readers to their sites. His computer programmer to paid 'blogger story was inspirational, to say the least. Not to mention his contribution to the debate over the future of newspapers. Taranto noted that TV didn't kill of radio, and radio didn't kill off newspapers. So, weblogs won't kill off newspapers either (you can't read a weblog on the toilet, he noted with dry wit). But in comparing weblogs to radio and television, Taranto seizes on precisely the point made by Marquis (also perceived as a critic by the 'bloggers in the crowd): This is a new medium, with new potential. For blogs are a new form of moveable type, and the internet the most dramatic development since Gutenberg.
Moveable type, in the words of former New Yorker critic Mimi Kramer, "...only much more moveable."