the ryan king

Joshua Schacter has just announced that he’s quit his day job to work on del.icio.us fulltime. He’s also taken on some outside funding.

I wish him the best and am fairly confident that del.icio.us will only get better.

Christopher J. Falvey compares the blogosphere to typing monkeys.

That’s some ridiculous hyperbole. Monkeys would have trouble even putting a sentence together and in an actual experiment with monkeys and a typewriter, they spent more time crapping on the keyboard than typing.

Mr. Falvey goes on to say:

If there is any filter- or differentiator- at all in the universe of blogs, its pure popularity. When it comes to media, that’s not really the best single “filter” for what should be influential or powerful. Today’s “best” blogs are not, by default, the most well-written ones, the most well-designed ones, nor even the ones with the most highly developed and cogent ideas. With the absence of obstacles and filters caused by advancing technology, “best” becomes defined as the ones that most stridently affirm its reader’s existing worldviews. The discussion- and discovery- of new ideas is secondary (if it exists at all.)

So, people are are a mindless herd, flocking to the blogs that others read, not being critical, not taking the time to criticize what they read (and writing responses on their own blog)? Perhaps we could at least celebrate the fact that many people can write. Write, as in readin’, ‘riting’ and ‘rithmatic. How many people can say that? If we consider all those alive today and those who’ve lived in the past, those who can write would probably be a small minority (of course, I have no data to back this up).

He concludes with:

The legacy of the blogging universe as a form of media will be defined by its choice in this matter: will it merely be the noisy, unfiltered amplifier to the pitfalls of modern mass media, or will it offer not only a true alternative in opinion, but an evolution and progression in how media is presented?

So, blogging with succede by filtering? It seems he’s saying that it would be better if a select few ” that will (or should) matter to the greater good of society,” should be the only ones blogging (or being read).

Please.