27
Jul

Bloggers Are Still The Bleeding Edge – If Not More So

Posted by Steven Hodson in Sunday, July 27th 2008      

Going exploring Yesterday I lamenting how little of any real interest there was to read – to be sparked into writing anything. How a single day can change things as much of my Sunday has been spent reading almost non-stop things of interest. In some ways there was almost too much leaving one wondering where to even begin writing. That is the incredible thing about this living breathing entity we call the blogosphere and make no mistake it might only be made up of ones and zeros but this ever so small segment of the larger web is indeed alive.

Like any living being it pulses with life that feels, cares, defends and yes reacts when any part of it is attacked. As such those of us that sit here each day in front of of our keyboards and monitors watch as an incredible amount of information flows in front of us on an almost minute by minute basis. Depending on our interests we write about politics, life, death and yes of course technology. Some of us prefer to write about the news as it happens while others prefer to reach deeper and write about the things we think about when it comes to technology; or our preferred area of interest.

We are still very much trying to gain a shaky understanding of this new territory that exists without any real rules or framework in order to provide those that follow with a sounder sense of what lies ahead of them in this new world of social media. Leslie Poston from Profy.com wrote about this lack of rules [nw] in a post yesterday where she suggests that this new world is inherently anti-rules because of its organic nature:

This trend toward a kind of social media home owner’s association is driven in part by ego and part by a desire for control and power, and it goes against the grain of social media.

Social media and the internet it plays on is organic by nature. Organic concepts scare the pants off of people and companies, especially big enterprise. After so many decades of an economy based on control, this constantly changing, shifting and, above all else, accessible new media has the mental suit wearers cowering in fear.

As Leslie points out though in her post there is a growing wave of people looking for these rules which makes them feel safe in this social media world. I have seen it beginning to happen on places like FriendFeed not to mention past experiences with things like a Blogger’s Code of Conduct [nw]. As well some people seem to feel [nw] that as the early travelers of this road we should be bound by some guild or association in order to sanction what we are doing to again make those who follow feel safer. This kind of talk pulls me back to a quote of Alvin Toffler’s in an interview [nw] by Strategy + Business that I read today:

I see that humanity has done phenomenally well, at incredibly accelerated rates, in introducing revolutionary technologies. But that’s the easy part of a transformation. Changing the social structure is much more complicated than developing a new bit of software. Bits and bytes don’t have vested interests, but people do.

I think that this under current of a call for rules or such similar ideas is a perfect reflection of Toffler’s point about people having vested interests. Rules only exist because people want to be able to exert some form of control over the situations that they find themselves in. where informal rules or codes of conduct don’t seem to work we collectively look to higher authorities to step in and impose them. This is of course goes against everything that the wider Internet was based on – which was the open and free dissemination of ideas and thought without any restrictions.

Whether this is a good foundation to build anything on is open to discussion – now and in the future. That doesn’t change the fact though that bloggers and those involved in social media in one way or another have become the vanguard of of these changes and I believe that we must make sure that we aren’t acting like those with vested interests. If we are then I think we will being doing not just ourselves but also those that follow a disservice.

Even as we debate these points and the need – or not – for rules I have been feeling that even within our very narrow spectrum of the web that once again things are changing. Like Mark Hopkins said in a post [nw] early this morning

There’s a new revolution afoot, and no one has quite pegged it yet. We’ve come pretty far, but we’re all working in a realm where we’re simply translating the Old Media one to one into the New Media. It’s grown up, and we know it makes money, but we haven’t transformed it yet. We haven’t made it our own.

That is the thing about being a part of the vanguard – a part of the bleeding edge of change – we are constantly looking to make the new things our own. Those that do manage to make it their own in turn become like way stations pointing the new arrivals towards the new trails that are being constantly blazed by those looking for even deeper social changes. Whether you want to travel any further is entirely a single person’s decision. Some will travel to the next station while others will indeed stay where they are because at this point that is where they feel the safest.

I do believe though that we can be assured that regardless of the format that they might end up using those that we now call bloggers will because of their nature keep traveling forward. I know I will be and I am looking forward to where ever that journey may take me.

How about you?



under: Blogging, Social Media    

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