Monday, March 19, 2007

Yet More Value for the People

At the bottom of an NYTimes.com article about the superlatives of the A380 Airbus mega-plane was a list of user responses. I can not find the link to the article, but one of the reader comments went as follows:

"WOW" - Chris Somebody

What a waste. Three letters that add no value whatsoever to anything for me or anyone else in the world with the exception of perhaps Chris Somebody who wasted the time writing this profound sequence of letters.

There were many of these reader comments at the bottom, the overwhelming majority of which were probably just as insightful with Chris' comment.

To be honest, I am confident that a majority of the class feels the same about this very post. If blogging were not tied to class participation all of this would have never been written. Would anyone really blog? I am still amazed at the enthusiasm surrounding Blogging. There is nothing special about it, users generate the content, and therefore can shape a blog to be whatever the majority wants it to be, a glorified web1.0 message board, a way to feel important, or to vent frustrations into cyberspace. Either way, we use ~3% of our brains (read it in a blog), equivalent to the proportion of valuable information we project on a daily basis. Enjoy.

3 comments:

Darshan said...

Wow!

Darshan said...

In all seriousness, I found a link to the article/blog so you can see what Goog is talking about.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/the-supersized-airliner-heads-to-america/?ex=1174968000&en=dd2942fbc7cdb9fc&ei=5070&emc=eta1

I completely agree that the value of blogging is reduced greatly as it has become ubiquitous. It seems to be an effective means of sharing one's ideas but not with large amounts of contributors posting.

TRON said...

I think the value of blogging has to be assessed through the blog's target audience. The New York Times has a very broad audience; therefore, the social forces that motivate people to post higher-value content are very diffuse. Compare that to the class blog, or a company blog, where the fact that your reputation is somewhat at stake is going to prompt you to add value with your content.