Communication

Are blogs useful? Let's not use this one as the yardstick.

They can be useful as a forum for an exchange of ideas, as a way of communicating. After all the internet is the great communicator, communication is what it does so well.

So if blogs are for thoughts, ideas, discussion, how do they fit into an information environment. Only so far as discussion does I guess. Discussion is good, to provoke more discussion, more ideas. Some blogs might be grounded in facts, used to showcase research, but most probably aren't.

How do we distinguish between types of 'information', types of dialogue, types of entertainment and types of research. The internet has all this and more in one place, and a phenomenal amount of it too. Some people have interesting opinions and ideas, other people just ramble on and on (ie me). So as with anything on the internet it is distinguishing, and then finding, the good stuff.

Anyway here is one blogger's very amusing take on Web 2.0, a bit old now but worth a read - Nicholas Carr's The amorality of Web 2.0