In Defense of Myself

There's been a lot of muck being hurled about lately harshly criticizing the explosion of user created web content, blogging, self-publishing, and the like. Admittedly many of the content on the web is mediocre, middle of the road, unimaginative, and unoriginal; perhaps well intended but poorly executed. But isn't that the majority of us human beings? We're trying our best, doing what can and saying what we feel. Not everyone can be on top, and not everyone can be on top all the time. Case in point, the major media networks. Take a moment to think what type of interest they might have in slamming bloggers, and hurranging Web2.0. They're threatened. And thank god! People are turning to blogs not because people are idiots, but because the networks are doing an inadequate job. Media was established as the fourth branch of government, but they have put down their arms and made comfy homes in the pockets of Washington. Say what you will about blogs, but they give Politicians and Networks reason to keep on their toes. Poorly written, reactionary, biased, or false, some blog somewhere will catch you. It will get out and you will hear about it. The blogosphere is dynamic, it is flexible. You know what you're getting into with a blog, and everything is peer reviewed constantly. They attack Wikipedia for being the product of amateurs, that "real" encyclopedias should be the be the one true authority. But on what grounds? Some anonymous group of people unelected and unverified telling us what we should accept as truth? Much better that we know who's hand it is that moves the pen, and are free to update, correct, reference, cite, and edit the entries at will. Collective expertise. And besides, it's probably not some high-school student from Muncie updating the Wiki for the USS Indiana, but it could be. He could have found some bit of information that no one else had put up. And he doesn't have to be told that he's too young, or too black, or has too many visible piercings, or not accomplished enough to know that. The point is, it's not disinterested unstudied people doing any of this on the web. They may have leagues to go in writing style, they may have years to go in research, but the people creating content on the web, shaking things up for all those who have sat in their nice seats of power for the last 100 years care about what they are doing, and most of them aren't getting a cent for it. Which is a way better indicator of expertise to me than any of the big checks being handed out to reporters and politicians these days.

(For clarification, I know very well that I am not above any of the loving criticisms I have hurled at the web in the preceding diatribe.)