 I
enjoy reading Dave Weinberger's Joho the Blog for two reasons: because
he's an incredibly bright guy, and because he gets you thinking about
things you don't ordinarily get around to thinking about (due to a
combination of lack of imagination and lack of time). I don't have time to think, I'm too busy
blogging. If that's your problem, Dave's the cure for what ails
ya.
I've talked on these pages before about the limitations of blogs: Their
inaccessibility to the technologically inept, the immense difficulty of
building an audience (and even finding others to 'talk with') when
you're a newcomer to blogging and hence subject to Shirky's Power Law
(first one in gets all the attention).
To me, the greatest limitation is blogs' lack of integration and
'transitionability' with other communication tools. Why haven't we
developed generally-accepted work-arounds that allow us to transition
from blog comments to e-mail threads, IM, telephony, wikis and other
tools, and back again? Have we become so used to being led around the
nose by the functionality (and lack thereof) of communication tools
that we've lost our imagination and social will to develop means to
jump to better tools when the one we're working isn't optimal? Skype
was one of the Top Technologies of the Year in Business 2.0's list, and
it's wonderful, and free, so why
isn't everyone using it to extend the relationships they develop on
blogs? And why are webcams still ridiculed, when everyone agrees
facial expresssion and bosy language add immensely to communication,
and we now have the high-speed bandwidth (well, 47% of us have anyway
per a recent study) to accommodate multi-media conversations? Why do so
few people take up my (and others', from what they tell me) invitations
to call them, Skype them, IM them, to allow the iteration
(back-and-forth) that is the essence of true conversation? And why,
when we do make that transition, and meet someone who's become a
'friend' through our blogs, is the first meeting or conversation in
aother medium so awkward, even jarring?
That's all I have today -- a lot of important questions, and no
answers. Thanks to Dave for raising the issue. If anyone has any
thoughts or answers on this, I'd love to hear them. Even additional
questions are welcome. And if you'd like to use another, more robust
tool than blog comments or e-mail to converse about this, just ask.
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