Many Dimes Worth of Sense

Many Dimes Worth of Sense

Good old Glenn Reynolds has gotten me worked up again!
It bothers me to hear bloggers characterized as mainly reacting to mainstream media stories which are later “closed out” by (guess who?) the mainstream media itself!
I take it the Story of All Stories will be the “Rise and Fall of Blogs” story. That’s what the mainstream media want — as long as they get to be in charge.
Trouble for them is, things don’t work that way when you’re dealing with Chaos. Like their immediate predecessors (those Masters of Chaos known as Point to Point file sharers) bloggers have rediscovered a basic principle of the Internet; it allows for infinite amounts of free communication from anyone to anyone.
Mainstream media is inherently at odds with this, because by definition they are dealing with a finite world of limited, extremely expensive bandwidth, assigned to them and rigorously policed by the government, notwithstanding a pesky little headache called the First Amendment.
Free speech is a big problem for them. It’s free! And nowadays, it’s fast!
Mercury, of course, was the Roman communication god: a god of speech as well as speed. Back in the days when our money was worth its face value, Mercury’s head appeared on the American dime. Same size, shape, and subject matter as the Roman denarius.
Mercury is my candidate as the God of Blog.


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