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Here's my thinking on why Instant Outlining (I/O) and weblogs provide value beyond what's provided by e-mail and instant messaging.  Both IM and e-mail are great tools for conversations between consenting individuals.  Beyond that, e-mail and IM break down, and weblogs and I/O take over.  Here are three reasons why:

Scalability and information overload.  Everyone is facing information overload.  There is too much information that the average person needs to know to function effectively.  So how should you get this information?  Right now, most people get it through e-mail.  However, for those of us on the leading edge of online workflow, the volume of informational e-mails has exceeded our ability to parse it.  Why?  E-mail is a terrible one-to-many publishing tool.  Not because the technology can't do it, it can, but because the volume of information published by an increasing number of publishers crowds out its basic functionality:  conversations.  Finding a valid conversation in the stack of inbox spam from friends, co-workers, and nameless hawkers of "penis enlargers" is frustrating and increasingly futile.  In contrast, weblogs and I/O provide publishers a place to put relevant information where it can be found by interested parties.  It rationalizes the flow and allows it to scale.  It is a parallel processing environment for the mind. 

Passive vs. active.  E-mail and IM demand my attention and my time (a dwindling resource) when I am least able to provide it.  The tools force me to read something I am not prepared to read (granted, e-mail is more passive than phone calls).  In contrast, Weblogs and I/O leverage my time.  They put me in control.  I can batch process my interactions with individuals and groups.  I can expand my circle of personal interactions and collaboration with little fear of being overwhelmed by the resulting interactions.  For me, the ability to time-shift in a passive collaborative environment makes me infinitely more productive.  Thinking in a massively active and interruption driven environment is like wearing a thought inhibiter.

Quality and complexity.  Weblogs and I/O allow me to construct and publish complex thinking.  Further, it archives that thinking so it isn't lost.  The conversational nature of e-mail and IM make sharing complex thoughts difficult and more time consuming.  It's hard, if not impossible to build a body of work that conveys a complex idea or plan.  Additionally, I can't easily leverage previous thinking or the thinking of others to create a more complex work.  The ephemeral nature of e-mail and IM is like thinking in quicksand. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Frustrating. I shall solve the mysteries of Stapler yet!

"If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don't hoard it. Don't dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
Louise Beal. "Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood."
P. J. O'Rourke. "Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs."

probity [Dictionary.com Word of the Day]

In my own words I'd describe EM as:

A site with collaborative new music recommendations that the community in turn rates and then our fancy math (based on Bayesian statistics) figures out not only the best recommendations but also the best people at creating and improving them (who we then reward).

It's part MetaFilter, part Slashdot, part CNET, part Amazon and part Wiki. It's a place you can go everyday to find out about new music; new music that is being suggested by the community not new music which is being recommended by a radio station funded with payola." [Matt Goyer]

New recommendations here.

[The Shifted Librarian]

The biologist Robert Full says the next generation of robots will be nimble crawlers. By Chee Pearlman. [New York Times: Technology]

The insect's highly serrated proboscis means it can pierce skin painlessly - now microengineers are copying the trick [New Scientist]

Very cool. By imitating the mosquito's needle, they have mocked up one that works in similar fashion. The problem they have is that the needle is very brittle, so there is a good chance that it will break, possibly forming a clot where it inserted, which could then lead to death via stroke in the patient. they would like to be able to make the needle permanantly attached to the patient, for constant analysis in diabetics.

Here I go: Always on drug delivery system, as a backpack IV. Got sick? Run down to the pharmacy and pick up a saline solution bag, lay low for 24 hours with it hooked up and you'll be right as rain. Forget coffee, get your morning dose of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals by IV while on your morning commute. The medicine bypasses the stomach, so less filler is needed in the delivery system, which in turn will cut down onthe amount of medicine that is showing up in the waterways, since less will be needed to get the same effect.

taciturn [Dictionary.com Word of the Day]