Blogosphere: The End of Equality
In an article that starts off from the recent FCC media concentration decision, Clay Shirky makes some of the crispest statements so far on the nature of the blog medium, and what it shows about human nature and freedom. Read the whole thing, as they say, but I'll highlight three passages:
- For people arguing about an ideal media landscape, the tradeoffs are clear: Diverse. Free. Equal. Pick two.
- Inequality is not a priori evidence of manipulation... it can also be a side effect of large systems governed by popular choice.
- The one incoherent view is the belief that a free and diverse media will naturally tend towards equality. The development of weblogs in their first five years demonstrates that is not always true, and gives us reason to suspect it may never be true. Equality can only be guaranteed by limiting either diversity or freedom.
Certainly we're looking at the lowest entry threshold, least controlled and controllable medium of global reach to come along yet. I only have two quibbles to make. The minor one is that Clay is fudging needlessly with 'suspect'. Come on, we know that audience and influences aren't flat in the blogosphere, and aren't going to be. How many power law curves based on sample sizes of overwhelming statistical significance does one need, unless there's a state of denial for other reasons?
And secondly, to those reasons. I object more strongly to seeing the word 'equal' used in this way, without qualification. There are two visions of equality: equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes. The conflict between these two definitions is the heart of a struggle that I don't care to see abdicated. Of course I'll back the entrepreneurial opportunity over the collectivist outcome any day. In blogs, we've got the best shot at equality of media opportunity that's come along to date. Those who get all weepy about the existence of power laws or an "A-list" of successful bloggers are saying more about their political agendas (or inarticulate envy), than they are about the blog as medium. We can be killing time on quixotic quests to buck human nature and wish away that nasty power law, or be figuring out how to lower the barrier to entry for reader and writer even further. The latter is my vote.
(And yes, I did knock off Mickey Kaus' title.) [Due Diligence]
4:09:38 PM 
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