Seems like today is all about followups and conversations among blogs. (For example, Mark Byron noticed my unfisking yesterday and wrote about it in his blog. My response to his response to my response to his original post can be found in his comments.)
So I wanted to elevate an interesting thread from my comments. The interesting part is provided by Dylan Tweney, responding to my post about the Shirky article. Tweney suggests another viable precedent for this type of mass-amateurization in the open source movement.
My response to that was, "hmm, not sure i'm swallowing that analogy just yet... there are parallels, but... hmm, tricky stuff. must think on it." A cop out! Perhaps I was distracted by the differences (the whole "tinkering" aspect of open source) instead of noticing the similarities that seem to relate to relieving certain activities of the requirement that they "pay their own way" for the time involved.
I used to call this the power of low thresholds. Because Enterzone never planned to make money, we outlasted many ambitious webzines that failed to make it over the higher thresholds they set for themselves. And yet, anything that does not sustain itself must be subsidized by something else. (For the blogger, this price may simply be paid in terms of less time and attention available to spend on other cherished pursuits.)
Tweney elaborates on the analogy:
Well, think about what Linux has done to the market for enterprise server OSes: It's reduced the price to zero. (Even Sun gives away Solaris for free now.) The beauty of open source is that anyone can contribute; their contributions are accepted only to the extent that the community rolls them up into the next release. Comparably, with blogs, people's posts get swept up into larger conversations or else they get ignored. The ugly side of this is that it can destroy commercial markets, if the free stuff gets good enough.
He also picks up on the music analogy (in my original post, I wrote "I would wonder whether this same form of mass-amateurization will also sweep through the music world?"):
Kazaa, Morpheus, etc. — all have the potential to do the same kind of thing for the music world, because they put artists in direct contact with their fans. Get enough fans, and you might be able to build a market for CDs, concert tickets, special goodies, etc. However, the emergence of this market is being thwarted by the legal attacks on P2P as a whole. The record labels are scared of P2P, and they have good reason to be. It's not just that fans can violate copyright and get free music — it's that P2P networks could change the entire economic system of music production and distribution.
The dynamics are different in the software, writing, and music worlds, but in each case it seems like there's a powerful sort of "mass amateurization" happening.
categories: memewatch
10:28:47 AM 
say what []
A positive front-page review of Rebecca Blood's Weblog Handbook at Slashdot generates a range of responses, most of which we've seen before from this quarter (weblogs are over, the writing is terrible/self-indulgent, who cares what you think, what's so hard about updating webpages, etc.).
Some choice comments:
Why would I care to read your stupid rantings? Why would I care to get my daily news from someone with as much authority on the 'news' as myself? Are we so in need of entertainment that our ravenous hunger for material has necessitated the development of individual publishing?Suggested riposte: Why should I care about your opinion on Slashdot?
Same commenter:
Don't get me wrong, that individual publishing exist[s] is a beautiful, beautiful thing. However, the blog phenomenon is about as interesting as reading other peoples checkbooks.Make up your mind! Is it beautiful or boring?
Another:
Um, I was under the impression that "blogs" (what a stupid name that is) were trendy and cool four years ago, but are just derivative sources of meaningless drivel these days. Do people actually still read and write these things?No, Virginia, they don't.
This one made me chuckle:
Hey everybody - I'm working on a new book. It's called "The Slashdot Handbook: Practical Advice on posting comments and submitting stories to Slashdot". Please buy it. Thank you.I always appreciate a good instance of the cat meme:
The point is, blogging is simple. Its not more difficult than back in 1995 when we all posted our first kitty-kat pictures using notepad or VI. Writing good content for blogs is the hard part.
But this post I think best exemplifies the viewpoint of a technically savvy person who can't understand why the less technically inclined might benefit from tools, shortcuts, and advice:
I edit my weblog with nano. Granted, I also edit it live, which bothers people as a concept, but I ssh into my data area for my web site, "nano -w weblog.html", and type away. When a month's worth of entries are generated (on the calendar change) I roll the old weblog over to weblog-archive-year-month.html, and start a new weblog with a template for the headers, page formatting, etc, using cp. I then link the new weblog.html to the archive, link the archive to the new weblog.html, and add an entry to the archive list page. It takes ten minutes per month if I'm drunk off my ass and can't type. I know that I'm not necessarily doing it the standard way, but HOW can one write a full sized book on weblogging? Better yet, how can someone justify paying more than $0.50 for said book?
categories: memewatch metablog
8:45:30 AM say what []
