I am indebted to the ever prescient Neale Towart for the following observation that seems to place blogs, citizen journalism and all this Web 2.0 palaver in some sort of context...
On blogs in general, a warning I found in this book by Michael Dibden (a crime novel set in Sicily actually), when the cops were talking about the backward beliefs of the locals versus so called sophisticated enlightenment people:"...after all, just what are we doing with these values? Take the internet. Here's the most powerful intellectual tool in the history of the human race and we use it to write narcissitic online journals and to "have our say" like a swarm of squabbling starlings. Enlightenment values? We're playing hide and seek in the library of Alexandria"
It's something worth remembering. I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to "look-at-me" journalism. I should be writing something devastating and worthwhile about the second test. I should get out for a walk. I should write something devastating and worthwhile about something worthwhile. I should get my hand off it.
Who cares what I should do.
Dibden (and Towart) are right. We aren't that much further along the modernist goat track. Are we just adding to the background static? Will all this pop eat it itself?
We carry on as if there's a million William Cobbett's changing the world, but it's just so much graffiti on the walls of a Pompeii knock shop.
If we're not careful, one day someone will be cleaning the Internet and it will go off.
