Everything doesn't mean everything, so I wouldn't casually conflate documentation - as I have been defining it on this weblog - and journalism.

Yet, journalism is also communal narrative to say the least. Journalism, quite precisely, 'documents' a community's self-understanding over time.

I'm not sure that older metaphors, including documentation, journalism and, for that matter, knowledge management, are rich enough to map to the writing environment foreshadowed (not yet embodied) by products like Radio.

(For that matter, what will writing itself mean, even within Frontier and Radio, as audio and video weblogs become ubiquitous?) 

Still, we have to work with the familiar to bridge to the unfamiliar.

The controversy weblogs have produced within professional (ie, paid) journalism as well as their penetration of that industry hint at the cultural changes up ahead.

Modern journalism, not to mention the modern corporation, were not given to us fully-formed by Zeus. They are themselves creatures of the train, telegraph, automobile, radio and, of course, the computer, to cite just a few enablers.

So far from vanishing because of weblogs (get real and don't forget to read John Perry Barlow again), we are in danger of enabling bigger totalitarianisms than we could have conceived with the technological children of the Apple II and MS-Basic.

Unintended consequences surround us at all times.

This only underlines how important it is that we rise to the level of actually thinking about the tools we are using today - and envisioning for tomorrow.

feedback:   8:23:51 AM