Articles from 2003-2003 about blogging. Both in different ways point to blogs as the seed crystal around which relationships and communities form.
Tom Coates: plasticbag.org | weblog | (Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything....
"Before the world of the weblog was the time of the homepage. Back before we knew any better, it was the homepage that was going to tranform the world. Everyone was going to have them. They were going to democratise publishing. Together we thought we were going to change the world. But we didn't.. "
But maybe we did... There's not a lot of difference between weblogs and homepages in some respects. Both are spaces to put written content online, for one. But the fact that homepages had no sense of standard structure, required manual updating, were unbound from time and were resolutely non-discursive meant that they were static, lumpen. At their best they became monolithic tomes - bunkers for content, guides updated haphazardly that infinitesimally accrete "content". In terms of the distribution of the word, the homepage was like a "Time Out Guide to {your name here}". The simple addition of structure and mechanisms for ease of publishing have made the comparable form of expression on weblogs so fluid and quick that it borders on speech. In terms of self-representation, the homepage is like a statue carved out of marble labelled carefully at the bottom where the weblog is like an avatar in cyberspace that we wear like a skin. It moves with us - through it we articulate ourselves. The weblog is the homepage that we wear. [emphasis added]
And this is the big leap forward - this is where the value of weblogs lies in the newly amateurised world. This flexibility of publishing creates a fluid and living form of self-representation, the 'homepage (as a place)' has become the 'weblog (as a person)' that can articulate a voice. And when there are a multiplicity of voices in space, then the possibility arises of conversations. And where there is conversation there is the sharing of information. And conversation about what? Well everything from music and movies and animation and medical information.
Weblogs are becoming the bridge between the individual and the community in cyberspace - a place where one can self-publicise and self-describe but also learn, debate and engage in community. In other words, weblogs are not only a representative sample of mass amateurisation, they're becoming enmeshed in the very structures of information-retrieval, community interaction and media distibution themselves. Weblogs are now facilitators of mass amateurisation.They're almost becoming one of its architectures...
and Clay Shirky:
Mass amateurization is the web's normal pattern. Travelocity doesn't make everyone a travel agent. It undermines the value of being travel agent at all, by fixing the inefficiencies travel agents are paid to overcome one booking at a time.
But the vast majority of weblogs are amateur and will stay amateur, because a medium where someone can publish globally for no cost is ideal for those who do it for the love of the thing. Rather than spawning a million micro-publishing empires, weblogs are becoming a vast and diffuse cocktail party, where most address not "the masses" but a small circle of readers, usually friends and colleagues. This is mass amateurization, and it points to a world where participating in the conversation is its own reward. [emphasis added]
