Is Blogging Optimal?
A Disconcerting Thought
tonight i posted on FDL the new secret releases from the Politburo files on Gorby's discussions about how to leave the fiasco in Afghanistan. The response had more to do with some silicon babe's divorce from Kid Rock, whoever he is, not that i don't listen in my head to what Miles Davis would have done with hiphop.
There was no response, which makes me question the entire understanding of americans during the Goebbels era of 24/7 very professional propaganda. I posted examples of the highest level discussions of Soviet meetings about how to leave Afghanistan, which obviouly has great meaning to american discussions today, given the Carlyle Report coming soon. And the response was pathetic. Witty puns about nothing that would survive by tomorrow, but worse no real discussion.
I remember the WELL days, when the first virtual community in the world was established. It was not top down, anyone could begin a thread and if, if, there were takes the thread would survive. But in these days we have top-down blogging, where even if Jane Hamsher isn't in the complete right direction, where she normally is, it's still top down.
Blogging is good for the world, we've seen that in countless ways, but to call blogging a community is, is... can i say it digitally?... False.
Community is not top-down. I believe, and who am i to believe anything much less post it on the net where no one will read it unless i resort to programmed search bombing, that the model of the WELL is so vital, and so necessary, that we need to rediscover the WELL in all its attributes. Especially in these critical times.
Is there anyone out there who wishes to discuss this key point? I would love it if all my old WELL friends and enemies would come and comment and link. That would be the beginning wouldn't it?
8 comments:
Hey Randy,
Just caught your post at FDL on the John Hall thread and hopped over to see what you do.
Just wanted to add a few thoughts to this piece.
I know its disheartening when posts don't get a response. It happens a lot. That's not to say they aren't read with interest by a lot of people. I read mostly offline because of an expensive by-the-minute dial up connection. (Obviously, I'm way behind in reading these posts and am unfamiliar with which thread you posted the information on. I wonder how many read it when it was too late to comment...hmm.)
Sometimes the posters are too busy writing free-wheeling fun to keep up with all the posts, especially from someone unknown to them.
I wasn't around during Well but I don't believe this is a top-down community although I grant it may appear that way. More like the community gathers at someone's house: someone that is a natural leader and has in some way earned respect. JMHO
Anyway, I think you have a lot of great stuff to offer and hope you continue to post it there.
Many Blessings
PS: Love what you're doing re: energy. Thank you so much!
thanks for taking the time to comment Audrey. At the end of the day, i still have so much respect for both the people and effort at FDL... and the whole netroots scene. the WELL was truly a community and still seems, from the perspective of two decades, to be far less top-down. Even so, i'm not really as diss-appointed as my post above, because i learn so much from the various discussions.
Glad you found a way to add momentum to the discussion. Sometimes two-way streets are empty and sometimes they're not.
It can be a bit frustrating at times. I gravitated to FDL because I just love seeing the current assholes in power belittled (and most of the people posting there do that very well). I also do some of that punning that you find distracting, but I spend equal time, at least, trying to make some sense of what is happening in the US and how that affects the rest of the world. I get frustrated, too, when people don't pay much attention to the way in which defense spending affects so much in their lives, because that's a pet peeve of mine.
I didn't say much about the source you posted about the Afghanistan talks, because I already knew of the substance of those talks, and the ways in which those decisions set up the country for the kind of misery it's seen in the last fifteen years or so, and have researched the hows and whys of the start of that proxy war with the Soviets.
But, all in all, you're going to get times where people aren't paying attention--that's true no matter where you go--and especially late at night, the times you would be dropping by because of the time difference. At that time of the evening here in the States, people are more interested in having a giggle and then getting to bed.
BTW--don't mean to be giving you a hard time about wind power--I'm probably even more for it than you are, if that's possible. I guess what you see as tremendous growth in the industry I still see as a drop in the bucket compared to what's necessary if we're going to survive the next fifty-to-one hundred years, and that the United States has tremendous intellectual resources which are not being well-utilized to those ends.
Cheers.
It can be a bit frustrating at times. I gravitated to FDL because I just love seeing the current assholes in power belittled (and most of the people posting there do that very well). I also do some of that punning that you find distracting, but I spend equal time, at least, trying to make some sense of what is happening in the US and how that affects the rest of the world. I get frustrated, too, when people don't pay much attention to the way in which defense spending affects so much in their lives, because that's a pet peeve of mine.
I didn't say much about the source you posted about the Afghanistan talks, because I already knew of the substance of those talks, and the ways in which those decisions set up the country for the kind of misery it's seen in the last fifteen years or so, and have researched the hows and whys of the start of that proxy war with the Soviets.
But, all in all, you're going to get times where people aren't paying attention--that's true no matter where you go--and especially late at night, the times you would be dropping by because of the time difference. At that time of the evening here in the States, people are more interested in having a giggle and then getting to bed.
BTW--don't mean to be giving you a hard time about wind power--I'm probably even more for it than you are, if that's possible. I guess what you see as tremendous growth in the industry I still see as a drop in the bucket compared to what's necessary if we're going to survive the next fifty-to-one hundred years, and that the United States has tremendous intellectual resources which are not being well-utilized to those ends.
Cheers.
I'm with you Montag Morgen. I love the puns on FDL, makes my writing sharper, and my thoughts as well. And don't worry about being more windpower than me, that makes me glad. Me just trying to put the facts out within the context of the necessary vision without which we don't survive.
Great work guys. Good stuff. I found lots of intresting things here. I will be back!
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I want such sites to become as much as possible, and their number increased with every day!
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