90% of everything is crap. Same goes for blogs. But it doesn’t mean they all are.

(Come to think of it, the same is true of social networking. Facespace and Mybook might be a load of old tosh, but Linux distrubutions’ forums are always a useful source of help and support.)

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

- Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

I don’t think blogs are any worse than ‘real news’. I mean, just yesterday I read a ‘news’ story that was actually over 10 years old. I quickly found a bbs article from 10 years ago, reporting the same thing. What about BBC putting irrelevant photos in their stories? Sometimes the photo actually shows the OPPOSITE of what the news story is about. Not too long ago they took a photo of a pro Ahmadinejad rally in Iran and put it with a anti-Ahmadinejad rally storry.

My point is, you should take any form of media with a grain of salt and take the time to check the sources of the important stories. Blogs or no blogs, that’s just how it is. The printed press was a great thing for news distribution, however that medium no longer allows just ‘anybody’ to distribute their information and blogs are a great way to take that power back. To bring it back to Iran, when all other media was blocked, we could get up to date information on what’s going on by monitoring twitter.

As for ‘social networking’ sites, I see nothing wrong with them. I would never open a facebook or myspace account because of privacy and security issues, but I am not going to say these websites are destroying any social fibre. The facebook and myspace crowd is actually quite social and outgoing.

If we take the time, we can argue that the telephones, telegrams, telegraphs, radio, carrier pidgins, letters and cave paintings were impersonal. People didn’t use these communication mediums in place of personal contact, they used them when personal contact was out of reach and that’s the case with social networking sites. People don’t send online messages instead of seeing people in person, they do it when the person is out of reach. So really, it helps people stay in touch when they’re not seeing each other.

So here’s what it comes down to… Nobody thinks facebook is a substitute, it’s a supplement. Nobody takes what bloggers write as an absolute truth. Ocasionally false information propogates through the internet, just as false information propogates through mainstream news. Bring on Web 2.0, I say!

Seriously, though, I agree with pretty much everything you said. If we continue putting technology into EVERYTHING we’ll end up like the “Borg” from Star Trek:TNG! I’m at least halfway there with my cobbled-together collection.

What really annoys me is how when I Scroogle for something I get a lot of results, but on obscure topics most of them are all links to/republishings of the same article. There’s a line between informing readers and spamming the interwebs with old information, without so much as an original thought or added info attached.

I do agree broadly with your points, but its not a problem with tecnology per se, its just human nature, we will always take things too far, whether its climbing everest or seeing how many burgers you can eat in an hour, but life will continue and the majority of us will manage to maintain a healthy relationship with technology, and everything else.

ps wouldn’t antitechnologicalegalitarianismist be a bit snappier ?