Linked Out: Blogging, Equality, and the Future
by Melanie McBride
With the mainstream media’s interest in blogging at a fever pitch, Mindjack’s Melanie McBride takes a critical look at the future of blogging and talks to some of the bloggers trying to shape it.
Published: April 19, 2004
As I write this, another journalist is explaining what a blog is for the first time. Quite possibly, they are describing blogging as a trend created by actor Wil Wheaton. Most likely, they’re announcing how blogs have just “hit” the mainstream. Blogging authority Rebecca Blood has named this repetitive rediscovery of blogging “Blood’s Law of Weblog History.” According to Blood, “the year you discovered weblogs and/or started your own is ‘The Year Blogs Exploded’.”
While mainstream media and newcomers succumb to Blood’s law, many early adopter bloggers are engaging in critical debates about the challenges ahead. Namely, whether blogging is really that wild frontier of digital democracy they had imagined or if it is merely an echo chamber of privileged and increasingly commercial interests.
Mindjack consulted several established bloggers about how the issues of equality, privilege, access, and standards are shaping the future of blogging.
