Trevor is here for dinner — he can’t resist Margaret’s soup, and who can? — and he asks me what an assortment of echo-bloggers would properly be called? He notes that it would be inappropriate to say “community,” since echo-blogging is in fact parasitic on more robust notions of community without attaining the goods of community life. I proposed something based on the metaphor of a crystal, characterized by rigidity, resonance, and symmetrical arrangement of component parts. Trevor says that’s too geeky (thanks, Trevor). He suggests “mobs,”but I rebut that Howard Rheingold has made mobs cool. Trevor agrees; “Then what about dumb mobs?”
DRMA: "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" by Ma Rainey; "Jealous Guy" by John Lennon; "Trilogy: Sunlit Path/La Mere de la Mer" by the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
It's one of the absurdities of life lived in geographical proximity to fine people like margaret and akma that akma could have this blogged before supper and that I could comment, using margaret's computer, from their home. Now he his going to his computer and will probably have this read before I finish typing it.
Posted by: Trevor Bechtel at June 10, 2003 06:53 PMI suppose "echo chamber" is too obvious? Or too spatial?
Posted by: Dorothea Salo at June 10, 2003 07:19 PMDumb mobs--Hilarious. And I do like your cystal metaphor, makes me think of the kryptonite--powerful stuff that keeps superman away.
But anyway, more seriously, I do think that there is this Echo tendency in web communities in general although I think that once we can link blogging communitites to forums and places that are outside of those communitites (like in and through interdisciplinary conferences, making use of blogging for journalism and political campaigns like Dean's blog) you can expand out in order to have more active dialouge and perspectives. There is a tendecy for like-minded perspectives to reinforce each other which is why it is key to link blogs practices and communities to social acitivties that are not necessarily oriented around the question of blogging per se. Get it out there.
BUT, I have to admit that there seems to be a divide between those that "use" technology just for tools like email and applications and then those that USE technology so that it is experienced as greater than just some tool. And people who use net technologies often don't take serious those who USE technology and the larger meanings that those who USE technology have because of USE. At least that is the attitude I often get from friends who are not as "close to the machine" making fun of this world and not taking it seriously that it can be meaningful socially and pyschologically.
I often brush it aside, but it often annoys me and find it to be a form of "ethnocentricism" that is really techncentricism, which is why sometime geek communities I find, close themselves off. Although they have been taken way more seriously than before and have gained a cetain coolness factor, there are still real forms of prejudice against tech USERS especially against geeks. Until those prejudices are broken through, some of the echo problems will surely subsit, to some degree.
Posted by: Biella at June 10, 2003 10:20 PM