Blogging and Democracy
Comment: Some quotable statements on blogging's impact on democracy by Seb: "Blogs act to amplify weak signals and make them louder without external help...Nowadays people overtly link to people, e.g. in blogrolling lists. But they should perhaps also overtly link to ideas. Idearolling lists."
Exactly. The most important tools of the Blogosphere, and the so-called information revolution, have to do with giving control of information to the edges of the network. By linking to ideas, and linking those ideas within our own blogs, websites, email lists etc, we are building the metadata about those ideas that we will need.
I don't believe for a moment that metadata schemas will work, they involve too much work for the originator and they don't provide any reliable information about its quality. Nor do they account for ways in which others will perceive and use the information, its structures or processes.
As long as we structure information, and blogs or database driven sites do that, we should be looking for tools that enable us to qualify the information for ourselves then share that qualification in a structured way with others. The network will take care of the rest.
Posted by: Earl Mardle at February 14, 2003 11:44 PMExactly. The most important tools of the Blogosphere, and the so-called information revolution, have to do with giving control of information to the edges of the network. By linking to ideas, and linking those ideas within our own blogs, websites, email lists etc, we are building the metadata about those ideas that we will need.
I don't believe for a moment that metadata schemas will work, they involve too much work for the originator and they don't provide any reliable information about its quality. Nor do they account for ways in which others will perceive and use the information, its structures or processes.
As long as we structure information, and blogs or database driven sites do that, we should be looking for tools that enable us to qualify the information for ourselves then share that qualification in a structured way with others. The network will take care of the rest.
Posted by: Earl Mardle at February 14, 2003 11:44 PM