I admire Jeff Jarvis and read Buzzmachine all day long. That said, I called him a moron and for that I am sorry; but, the blogosphere is a mass, monolith, and a medium.
I really didn’t meant to call you a moron but then again the name of my blog is Because the Medium is the Message and it was late last night when I read it.
I constantly tell my students that they are way way way more than just their personal voice. Yes, there are two distinct levels: individual (blogger) and cultural (blogosphere). And each blogger is for sure a person and for sure has her own words and her own personality. But you’re doing bloggers — especially the neophyte — a disservice when you suggest that they’re not a medium.
The blogosphere is a medium — a very powerful tsunami of individual voices (individual ants) that in unintended consequence have created an emergent pattern, an emergent voice — the passion chamber (the ant colony, which has its own life, its own personality), if you get my drift from Naked Conversations — that is “a mass, not a monolith, not even a medium.”
You can call an AP stringer just a person, a voice. But, if that stringer is picked up and repeated and replicated (and we all know that there is zero discernment between AP stories and NYTimes stories, sadly) then that single voice can simple change brand and cultural perception.
The single voice is not alone. That single voice is Kosmos.
Comments (4)
No need for falling on swords, mate. I enjoy the argument. What I was arguing against was the idea that commentators could lump us ALL in together as if were were one monolith that could be dismissed because you don’t like what one blog out of 34 million does. I’m sure we agree that that’s silly and essentially insulting. Yes, we the people have a powerful new medium. But we don’t speak with one voice. We’re not a mass. We’re people. And we disagree. Just like this, eh?
I grew up in Hawaii so hari-kiri is just what I do when I shame someone or myself. Just what I do.
Anyway, we do have one voice! We don’t get to choose it, it is an emergent voice and an emergent pattern and if we don’t participate, we are not part of that emerging pattern.
I agrree with you.
Jeff Jarvis is a great writer. His sense seeing things different is very refreshing to read at the mornings.
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