Hard to believe, but blogging has just celebrated it's 10th birthday. What would the world be without all those bloggers out there? Many would say, better off! That would be a harsh judgment.
The Guardian reports:
"For Blogger, the web service that enabled anyone who could type to publish online, is 10 years old this month. On 1 September, there was a party in San Francisco to mark the moment, attended by - among others - Blogger's founder, Evan Williams (who later founded Twitter), and the journalist Scott Rosenberg, who has just published "Say Everything" (sayeverything.com), an absorbing book on the phenomenon that Blogger enabled."
And:
"Blogging is thriving. In virtually every area of human interest, the diversity and quantity of fact and opinion available online dwarfs what was available in the print era. In the old days the News of the World had a ludicrous slogan: "All Human Life Is Here", a promise on which no publication could ever hope to deliver. The "blogosphere" is the first medium we've ever had which could conceivably live up to the slogan.
Blogging reverses a trend that had become increasingly worrying in an era dominated by mass media, namely the erosion of what the cultural critic Jurgen Habermas called "the public sphere" - an area where citizens gather to generate opinions and attitudes that affirm or challenge the actions of the state. Mass media offered the illusion of diversity while narrowing the range of real choices available - the "600 channels and nothing on" syndrome. Blogging has revived - and begun to expand - the public sphere, and in the process may revitalise our democracies. If it does, then we will have Evan Williams largely to thank for it."
The Guardian reports:
"For Blogger, the web service that enabled anyone who could type to publish online, is 10 years old this month. On 1 September, there was a party in San Francisco to mark the moment, attended by - among others - Blogger's founder, Evan Williams (who later founded Twitter), and the journalist Scott Rosenberg, who has just published "Say Everything" (sayeverything.com), an absorbing book on the phenomenon that Blogger enabled."
And:
"Blogging is thriving. In virtually every area of human interest, the diversity and quantity of fact and opinion available online dwarfs what was available in the print era. In the old days the News of the World had a ludicrous slogan: "All Human Life Is Here", a promise on which no publication could ever hope to deliver. The "blogosphere" is the first medium we've ever had which could conceivably live up to the slogan.
Blogging reverses a trend that had become increasingly worrying in an era dominated by mass media, namely the erosion of what the cultural critic Jurgen Habermas called "the public sphere" - an area where citizens gather to generate opinions and attitudes that affirm or challenge the actions of the state. Mass media offered the illusion of diversity while narrowing the range of real choices available - the "600 channels and nothing on" syndrome. Blogging has revived - and begun to expand - the public sphere, and in the process may revitalise our democracies. If it does, then we will have Evan Williams largely to thank for it."
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