My blogging process.
The Zahmoo blog, champion of a story-telling-based bottom-up change process called Most Significant Change, is asking bloggers to explain the Most Significant Change that has resulted from their blogging activity since they started blogging.
But what I think is most significant is all the changes that have not occurred despite the explosion of weblogs and attention given to them:
- The
business world has not embraced weblogs, and has not significantly
changed its 'information behaviours' as a result of the availability of
blogging content and tools.
- The news media have not
significantly changed their business models or means of operating or
communicating as a result of weblogs -- tens of millions of supposed
new 'competitors'.
- The education process has not significantly
changed as a result of the availability of a great deal of new, free,
context-rich information on weblogs.
- People have not become
acknowledged as 'subject matter experts' as a result of the information
they publish on their weblogs -- people aren't getting job offers,
awards or recognition in the (other) media because of their blogs.
- The
publishing industry is churning out more 'hard copy' books and
magazines than ever before, and it has not significantly changed its
business model.
- De facto networks of trust and reputation have
not significantly changed because of weblogs -- ask the vast majority
of people who they trust, who they ask for advice, and where they look
for advice, and you won't hear bloggers and blogs mentioned.
- The
reason a lot of people go online is social -- to connect with other
people rather than to get information. And when they do look online for
content rather than connection, what they're looking for(music, health information and porn) is not a significant component of what's on weblogs.
Many,
probably most, blogs are either (a) channels to specialized non-weblog
information (via hotlinks) -- the vast majority of links in blog
articles are not to other
blogs, or (b) personal conversations among a small, close-knit group of
people, on subjects of no lasting import. Despite the fact that blogs
get high Google-rank on subjects they write about, this does not appear
to be creating important or broad new audiences for bloggers -- the
average visitor to a blog stays around for only 90 seconds, and those
that arrive via Google searches stay on average only a fraction of that
time.
If a virus were to wipe out all traces of the blogosphere
tomorrow, the sad truth is that most people wouldn't care or even
notice, and what people do and think wouldn't significantly change.
Maybe that's why so many people think blogging is just a fad, something
that will soon disappear and be forgotten. It's not essential to anything.
Weblogs, like iPods, fill a want, not a need.
It's certainly possible for a want to evolve into a need, but I don't
think that's happened with weblogs, yet. Any of three things might
change that:
- A realization in the business community that weblogs enable simple creation and self-managed sharing of context-rich
(and therefore highly valuable) information, something critical that
traditional knowledge-sharing tools and repositories can't offer;
- An evolution in the design and function of weblogs from a diary format to a content composition
format, so that instead of a bunch of disjointed entries, the weblog
would consist of 'pieces' of content (perhaps in many different media)
that could be organized, combined, indexed, formatted and viewed in
different ways to suit different users. Whereas now creating a book
from entries in a weblog is cumbersome (and the result is not pretty),
this additional content composition functionality would let publishers
produce elegant e-books and e-magazines by simply 'composing' weblog
articles together (the table of contents and index would be produced
automatically). And educational curricula could likewise be developed
and continuously updated by 'composing' pieces from various online
sites (with appropriate permissioning) into a complete online course.
These compositions could then be printed out for offline use, so your
corner instant printer could become your instant hardcopy publisher.
- Some weblog tools could morph into full collaborate environments where groups of people with common interests, practices, projects or purposes could co-develop information and entertainment 'products'.
So-called 'groupware' has not been very successful largely because many
groups lack sufficient shared passion, or a shared sense of urgency, or
sufficient motivation to develop competence in using online tools.
Co-development of a world-class compilation of ideas or expertise on a
particular subject, or shared software or multimedia products (music,
films, or books), on a shared space, would not suffer from this lack of
motivation, and could produce collective wisdom and genius that is far
more exciting than weblogs (even group blogs) can hope to offer. And
there's no reason why the tool to do this couldn't be built on a blog +
wiki platform, a composing environment that a lot of people have become
comfortable with.
Any of these three possible evolutions of
the lowly blog would, I think, change weblogs from being a tool for
amateur hobbyists into a professional information management tool with
powerful commercial application, a tool that fills a real need instead
of just a want.
The more commonly-discussed evolution of blogs
into multimedia sites that offer 'programs' instead of 'posts' would
not, I would suggest, significantly increase the value or visibility of
blogs -- as YouTube has shown, you don't need a blog to get a lot of
attention for your video. And I think it's naive to hope that most
users of the mainstream media will ever get so disgusted with the lack
of investigative reporting, courage, independence and quality of these
media to take the time to look for something better in blogs -- most
readers are just not that discriminating, and don't care that much
about whether they're getting the truth, or the whole story, or not.
Until
one of the three evolutions above occurs, we'd be wise not to give up
our day jobs or pin our egos to the success of our blogs. It's getting
harder and harder to find the good stuff in the ever-growing firehose
of stuff in the blogosphere, and to get our voices heard.
When
one of these evolutions occurs, then we'll have a Most Significant
Change to write about blogging. So far, however, what's most
significant is how little has really changed. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
