I detest the word "blog." It sounds like the noise a bulimic makes after a hearty meal.
Unfortunately, this faux onomatopoeia has done more to undermine blogs, blogging and the so-called blogosphere than a thousand maladroit Columbia Journalism Review articles.
Nevertheless, we are in the midst of a new kind of internet boom, thanks in large part to this weblog phenomenon. It's not an economic bubble, where scores of startup companies run by fresh-faced 20-somethings are blowing through wads of venture capital in the hopes of becoming the first eBay or Amazon.com in their digital niches. Rather, it's a revolution in the dissemination of intellectual capital.
Some would say I'm overselling this, but then again these are probably the same people who consider bloggers "pajama pundits." Or are the solipsists who once looked upon the internet as a fad, believing it would suffer the same fate as CB radios, and who once thought online news would never equal print.
But in fact the blogosphere has evolved into a sphere of memes and ideas that are constantly shaped by the millions of web users who write, read and comment on blogs. In a sense, it operates in a similar fashion to open-source code, where a loose confederation of programmers tinkers with software, adding to it and sharing contributions with anyone who is interested.
In the world of words, the closest analogy would be Wikipedia, the web citizen's encyclopedia that is compiled exclusively by volunteers. The problem is, since anyone can write anything about anybody or anything without any oversight, the quality is often uneven. For example, I plugged myself (a subject I am somewhat familiar with) into its search engine and found a glaring error and a typo in the short, 95-word passage. Like consensus, Wikipedia is wonderful for getting people active in the process, but perhaps not as good for editorial accuracy. (Then again, have you seen The New York Times' correction box?)
Of course, there are intellectual inefficiencies in the blogosphere, and, of course, a lot of hot-gas rhetoric, vitriol, inane discussions, score-settling and outright buffoonery. But at its best, it is a teeming marketplace of ideas, with the best ones holding sway, a pure meritocracy.
In a sense, blogs function like peer-review journals do in the academic world, but there's a key difference. The distribution of articles in academic journals is largely controlled by a publishing cartel that charges exorbitant amounts for subscriptions, which are subsidized by the institutions and universities that can afford them. Think of it as the socialist model for informational exchange. This dampens participation (read: supply of ideas and input) and, I would argue, deleteriously affects the level and quality of discussion.
With blogs, however, anybody with an internet connection can engage anybody else. Concepts are presented, attacked, sliced, diced, added to and subtracted from, mangled, massaged and molded until what is left is an amalgam of the finest we as an online society have to offer. For the digitally well-endowed, it's akin to free-market capitalism, with information as its currency. And not only do we all get to watch, we can join in.
Case in point: Last week, BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis posted an entry on "exploding TV" that touts the idea that television as we know it will end in the next few years, supplanted by a whole new generation of searchable video, almost unlimited content on demand, stowing of journalists' primary source material -- interviews, documents -- that never make it into their finished pieces, and the possibility of vlogging (video blogs).
Jarvis linked to snippets of related ideas presented by Fred Wilson, John Battelle, Mark Cuban, Jay Rosen and Steven Johnson, among others. Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine, followed it with a post of his own, a continuation of a think piece entitled "The Long Tail" that he wrote for Wired magazine, and which had kicked off this digital debate. (Note: Before anyone e-mails me with charges of a conflict of interest, note that Wired magazine and Wired News are wholly separate companies with different corporate owners.)
In his essay, Anderson celebrated the breakdown of the old world economic order, to be replaced (potentially) by a new era of "open distribution" for any video content. "This, like the smashing of distribution bottlenecks everywhere," he argues, "could shift consumer taste from hits to niches, creating a Long Tail of demand." In other words, consumers would have access to any type of content they desired. Nothing would ever be out of print, because there would always be a market for it, no matter how small. Instead of Hollywood and the record industry deciding what we can buy, and neglecting to sell anything that doesn't generate high enough returns, we the consumers would. If the Long Tail were to have a slogan, it might be democracy, disintermediation and corporate decay.
So you see, we could fast be approaching an era of complete customization. Ultimately, Anderson defined the Long Tail as "content that is not available through traditional distribution channels but could nevertheless find an audience." In other words, "niche content." How would we get it? Over the internet, of course.
But not so fast, blogged broadband master Om Malik, who questioned the economics of distributing TV over the internet for mass consumption. "An average American watches four hours of television and assuming that he gets to pick and choose at a rate of 99 cents an hour," Malik wrote, that means he will spend about $1,465 a year or about $120 a month, and when you throw in the download costs -- perhaps $50 a month -- that means it would run net-TV watchers about $170 a month. Contrast that with the average cable bill of $52 a month. Malik predicts "the delta is just too wide." Before this new world of content could be unleashed, the price of bandwidth would have to plummet.
Who's right? Who knows?
But the discussion is groundbreaking. And that's why blogs are not only here to stay, they will help us forge our own future.
I wish we could change the word, though. Instead, I'll just have to get beyond the sound of it and focus on the almost boundless possibilities.
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Adam L. Penenberg is an assistant professor at New York University and the assistant director of the business and economic reporting program in the department of journalism.
