I have recently rediscovered some stuff we can do with Radio News Aggregation (subscribing to other web sites whose traffic particularly interests us). Oh yes, I had read the documentation and struggled to understand what it all means. But sometimes the DOING is educational.
Thanks to Dave Winer [Scripting News] link to Ray Ozzie on why weblogs are good for discourse. Yes. Flames don't attract. New ideas do. Weblogs can have a high signal-to-noise ratio. Powerful statements are possible in this medium, where powerlessness rules in discussion fora. In this medium everyone can have the last word. UNQUOTE [Scripting News]
I agree with Ray that architecture can be critical. We see in the Computer Security debate that people are trying the impossible. We have software out there that did not have security considered in the original design, so it is like putting a padlock on a tent, or a house of cards, to make the results secure after the fact, when it is discovered that security should have been there all along.
The power of a network are the number of people connected to it. The value of a fax machine is the fact that millions of other businesses are networked to that technology. With many architectures we have unwanted participants: flames; spam; intruders; other dysfunctional human behavior, that we label as noise getting in the way of useful signal content. Ray is absolutely correct that the signal to noise ratio is extremely high with Blogging. Plus, he does a great job of explaining how the architecture of Blogging makes that a reality.
One downside of this is the risk that Blogging will eat excessive amounts of our time that could be more constructively expended. Just as earlier generations of technological enthusiasts became TV couch potatoes, or in my case I used to spend hours every day dealing with e-mail, because there were hundreds of interesting posts I wanted to read, but I had to wade through a high ratio of spam and virus forwardings to get at the good stuff.
By moving from AOL to Eudora, my e-mail is automatically categorized into that which I can look at any old time, and the more urgent categories. I can always go to the directory of mailboxes and highlighted are which boxes contain e-mail not yet opened.
News Aggregation of Web Site subscriptions has something similar. It comes in, but I do not need to look at it right away, and even if archives from weeks ago get lost, there is a continual stream of new fascinating material for my perusal.
Personal 2 do list ... the last time I backed up my Radio was beginning of July, and since then I have increased my Web Subscriptions to 15, and made some alterations to my Template, let alone the posts here. My desk top dynamics also have changed. My Screen Saver's unused CPU seconds are now working on finding a cure for cancer http://members.ud.com/about/
1:03:49 PM 
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