BLC05 : A final thought for the day

Jon and I decided to grab some dinner at the bar downstairs. We saw Paul, Mike and John looking for a table and invited them to join us. After a spirited conversation about sports, TV and the most repulsive food items you can possibly imagine, we were joined by Jim and Chris, a few more from England and then a few more from America. Table of two turned into quite a diverse little learning community in itself.

Of course, since it’s such a hot topic right now, the conversation did turn to blogs a few times. There were a few people who hadn’t attended a blogging session and were speculating that it was just the latest in a long string of high tech ways to manage a web site. I took the bait and had to jump in to the conversation and explained a few of the reasons why blogs are actually quite significant and a few of the ways that they are fundamentally different than traditional static pages.

However, thinking back on that conversation I realized that I kind of missed the point just a bit. Blogs themselves are not that significant. They’re nothing special. What’s special about the medium is that people are able to connect and have conversations in ways they were unable to previously. The important thing is that the world is flattening I guess (is there a Border’s nearby where I can pick up that book?), and blogs are just one more way that people are able to make it a little flatter.

I think it’s really important that we keep our eyes on the prize. Blogs themselves are like pencil and paper and keyboards and mice and cell phones and palm pilots and so on. They’re a gadget. A wonderfully shiny gadget, but a gadget nonetheless. It’s the conversation that occurs through them, the communities that are built, the connections that are made that are truly significant. Blogs can enable such communication, but it isn’t the blog that’s important. It’s almost like someone building a house and then celebrating the hammer.

In a few years, there will be a leap in technology. Someone will come up with something new that puts blogs to shame, makes them semi-obsolete (at least to the early adopters!). What comes along will do an even better job at making the same connections between people, increasing the accessibility of information available worldwide. When that happens, people will probably be just as prone to celebrating this shiny new tool and heralding it as the greatest thing since the lava lamp.

We need to keep in mind that we should be celebrating the message, not the messenger.

blc05