Rise of the Blogeoisie
The whole article is interesting -- a fresh look at the blogging world and the bloggers who inhabit it. Note how Google's PageRank reputation algorithm has been turned into a tool for the blogeoisie to exploit. Below are my favorite paragraphs but go to the link to read the whole article.
- 15 May 2003 - Spiked-Online
Blog eats blog
by Bill Thompson
NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.
"The O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference (ETCON) has established itself as the highlight of the geek calendar after only three years - the place where technology meets the street.
"Every talk, keynote, informal session, water-cooler conversation, party and failed sexual encounter was extensively covered, in real time, by bloggers who would rather write 'I am sitting here' than sit there, and note that 'the audience is not paying attention' rather than consider that they aren't paying attention either.
"Sadly, hours spent with my head down the wirelessly-enabled toilet that is today's blogosphere revealed only that these many and varied comments form such a complex tapestry of overlapping meanings, that they make the reports from embedded journalists in Iraq seem like models of clarity.
"Reading the blog coverage may not tell us much about what actually happened, but it does reveal something of interest. Within the blogosphere, we can identify some that belong to a new intellectual elite - a small influential group of people, who have managed to turn their self-publication obsession into a power base. It will come as no surprise that many of them either organised or spoke at the conference.
NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.
"Howard Rheingold, Tim O'Reilly, Clay Shirky, Doc Searls, Dave Winer and Ben Hammersley (no, I'm not going to promote them even more by linking to them) are all what Register reporter Andrew Orlowski calls 'the A-list bloggers', the people whose regular musings on their personal websites can shape debate and make reputations.
"If this was just a random collection of people with more time than sense - a self-referential group of average intellects sharing their views on the internet - then it would not be worrying. But these discussions do not take place in a vacuum. Despite the findings of the Pew Internet and America Life Project - that the number of regular visitors to even the highest-profile blog is too low to be statistically significant - blogs exert real influence over how many others think about the internet and its future.
"Fortunately for them, in the hyperlinked world it is not necessary to airbrush dissenters out of the group photograph. You can simply wait for Google's PageRank to promote the ideas the A-list find acceptable and linkworthy to the top of the page, while the websites of apostates disappear below the fold and out of history. Who needs a memory hole when the world's favourite search engine does the job so effectively?
"These people are not quite an aristocracy. Perhaps they are simply the blogeoisie (pronounced bloj-wah-zee), a dominant class in network society. Or it may be simpler to think of blogs as a feudal system, with respect and links acting as the chief currency. The peasants toil in the low-rank blogs, paying their tithe in LazyWeb projects to the lords of the link in return for an occasional mention from Hammersley or Searls."
NOTE: This is the "Cynthia's Condensed version of Bill Thompson's article". THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Go to
www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DDA4.htm
to read the entire article.
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My term for what Bill Thomson calls the 'blogeoisie' and Andrew Orlowski calls 'the A-list bloggers', is the '20 guys blogging each other'. Less elegant but perhaps more descriptive.
