Polis Under Construction

I’ve been blogging, off and on, for a while now.  I enjoy it a lot; it’s great to put words out there, find little pieces of information, and watch people flock to them.  There’s a reason I keep coming back.  Of course, there’s a reason I keep leaving as well.

I’ve tried several times.  Originally, I treated it as an anonymous, personal space.  I mixed anecdotes and subtle references to offline friends with generic political opinion.  It was fun, but it didn’t really keep me interested.  It takes a certain level of arrogance to think that others want to know your minutiae, and political opinion is easy to find online.

So I tried again.  I’m fascinated by politics, especially on a macro level, and the interactions it has with society.  I stripped out a lot of personal navel gazing and dug for stories that seemed to receive less attention, looking for patterns.  The series of public protests that occurred in the Ukraine, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, and Burma were remarkable to me, especially for their limited successes in Ukraine, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, and recently Nepal.

But massive public participations heralding a possible rejuvenation of democracy only happen so often.  If 2-3 posts are going up every day it’s too easy to devolve into the same old echo chamber much of the blogging community seems to be.  There are excellent blogs, and I enjoy reading several regularly.  But, it seems that too often a blog becomes little more than a news aggregator; collecting and distributing bits on cute animals, technology news, and (US) politics with personal opinions attached.

That, I think, is what ended my blogging in the past.  We already have news aggregators, better ones than a one man blog could ever be.  And I have an inherent distrust of the packaging of opinion as a unique product.  If that is all that a blog is adding to a story it ripped from the New York Times (while criticising the media for hiding the story), I don’t see why I shouldn’t go there instead, unless the blogger adds some special experience or perspective.  If I’d rather read a primary source, how can I expect readers to come to me?

For the most part, the blogging community, though, apart from a few high profile writers, does little more than pass around stories grabbed from someone else.  There is a reason that people like Lessig, Doctorow, Mankiw, Scoble, and Drudge have the success they do.  They either have the experience to provide perspective or information that can’t easily be found elsewhere.  A blogging community that revolves around a few high profile sources does not live up to its claims that it democratizes media.  Access is certainly far better when anyone can get online and publish, but that benefit is lost if everyone is posting the same thing.

This isn’t the way it should be. Read the rest of this entry »