Weblogs as distributed conversations [1].

Weblogs as distributed conversations.

Death to Blogs. Jonathan Peterson: Death to Blogs. [Doc Searls Weblog]



Distributed conversations and the communities that they create/nurture are the killer app of the internet. Let’s talk about why that is revolutionary:


  • It’s uncontrollable – While governments, media companies and even technologists may try to conspire to deliver least-common-denominator pablum that can be monitored, licensed and controlled. Self-published content may easily be replicated, anonymized and what’s more it is text, allowing it to flow along ultra-low bandwidth backchannels where necessary to avoid disruption.
  • It is ubiquitous, open and simple – Blosxom is tiny. The entire tool could pretty conceivably run in an 802.11 enabled hand-held. The APIs for blogging , aggregating and notification are open and evolving.
  • It’s addictive – ’nuff said
  • It is useful – I know that there are few/no examples extant, but clued-in companies will start realizing that blogs are great tools for corporate/project memory. Perhaps they will be evolve to become a tool that enables knowledge workers speeding the transition away from business tools and processes in use today that were designed for the mass-production factory mindset of the industrial revolution.
  • What obvious things have I missed?

An excellent reflection on the more important dimensions of weblogs, especially from a knowledge management perspective.

[McGee’s Musings]