Tropophilia

The conversation started by Steven Hodson about how bloggers can most usefully fulfill their roles and obligations to their audiences has grown to proportions rivaling some of our other popular posts. I learned of Steven’s initial post through Corvida at SheGeeks, who had added her own thoughts to his original theory. I responded with a critique, which prompted Corvida to rebut and clarify. Along the way, readers of all three blogs have chimed in through comments as well as on FriendFeed and Twitter.

Steven, Corvida, and I have since reached common ground in the fact that bloggers are indeed similar to news anchors in that they highlight issues for their readers. We’ve also essentially agreed that bloggers can be more aptly described as “layers” to raw information rather than filters for it. Finally, we’ve also found consensus in the fact that the term “blogger” is to broad a category to attribute specific characterisitics to it.

This last point has really had me thinking about blogs and digital media in general. What’s the big deal?

Before he passed away, my grandfather tried on several occasions to have me explain this new information age to him. “What is the Internet?”, he would ask. How do you answer that? I tried my best, but in the middle he’d interrupt me and ask quizzically: “Click? What’s a click?”. It dawned on me that he really didn’t know that much about computers, either. How do you explain to someone like that — someone who uses the Internet on very basic levels, if at all — why blogs are revolutionary? (See this all-too-familiar story by Madeleine at EchoDitto for more laughs.)

Though I’m not sure even this would have helped my grandfather, I discovered that the ever-awesome Common Craft had made “blogs” the topic of one of their genius “in plain English” videos:

Many of you will say, “yada yada yada, old news, Jarred’s having another technology lovefest.” Alright… yeah… maybe to a certain degree I am. :)

But watching this really took me back to the basics of why blogging is an amazing medium. It further made me realize that what makes it so amazing are conversations like these. Throw an idea out on the web, and in seconds you can have people from all across the planet reacting to it with their thoughts and arguments. To us — who have grown up with video games and computers and the Internet — blogs are neat, but commonplace. To our grandparents — who, having lived three to four times as long as us, have seen a decent number of amazing things — to these veterans of life, blogs are extraordinary to the point of incomprehension. That should tell us something.

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user lyzadanger.