Wednesday, February 01, 2006

A blog post on blogging

Thanks to Damien who spoke to us last night about blogs. And thanks to also Piotr, who spoke about Wikipedia, and Luke, who spoke about podcasts. I am still digesting and exploring what you three have shared with us in class.

As we discuss these things and their relation to digital governance, I wonder what our place is in the big picture. Are we just "consuming" the technology, or are we "participating" in a new cultural movement?

Is anyone translating the chatter into a bigger vision?

7 comments:

Damien said...

Sorry for the belated response, here...but thanks for the shout out.

I just got Dan Gillmor's _We the Media_, and I think that there might be some answers in it for you.

The whole "consumption / production" distinction is starting to collapse with new media--in fact, this might be the defining feature of new media. One of the big critiques of old media like television is that it makes you passive--you're just "consuming" images. There are hundreds of critiques of this theory, of course. People "do things" with television--they have conversations about it, they participate vicariously in the drama unfolding on the screen, they have (sometimes strange) relationships with characters, etc...

I always feel like I could meet this critique halfway--there is something distinct and valuable to the production of your own media.

So, in response to your intial question, I think that consumers of media have _always_ been participating in particular cultural movements--but that consumers of new media are participating in a way that is much more sophisticated than in times past.

And, most importantly, new media users are closing the gaps between what a theory of democracy purports to do and what the human-all-too-human institutions of democracy actually do. In other words, new media are facilitating openness, transparency, and accountability. More of these three things isn't a recipe for utopia--there's downsides to them as well. But I'm optimistic enough to think that the upside outweighs the downside.

I'd also recommend poking around www.extremedemocracy.com.

Sorry for the longest blog comment ever. :-)

Liz said...

Worth every word!

You make a good point about how new media facilitates more participation - thus blurring the line. I need to digest and then I will post more.

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