Throw Things Out on the Web, and Google--or, Rather, the Distributed Information-Processing System that Is the Actively-Linking Webloggers of the World--Will Organize Them

Andrew Samwick hits on an important principle of decentralized information processing systems:

Vox Baby: Eventually, We All Blog for Google: Yesterday, the Rockefeller Center hosted a blogging panel, moderated by John Hinderaker of Powerline and comprised of Ann Althouse, Brendan Nyhan, Laura Clawson, Roger Simon, Joe Malchow, and Andrew Seal. It was a very productive discussion.I came away with two main points.

First, as noted particularly by Nyhan, Clawson, and Seal, there is very little that is inherent in blogging that makes it a superior form of commentary to traditional forms. We should think of them as complementary, and, as some of the other panelists pointed out, incremental to traditional media. The lower cost of blogging as compared to other media outlets means that the set of people who can contribute is much wider. There have been episodes where it has been a blogger, possibly in conjunction with blog readers, who has brought to light new information that would have otherwise been missed. Most of the time, this is not happening, and there is very little that is new in blogs. Good writers get bigger audiences, just like any other form of writing. But it is nice to have another mechanism that can occasionally make a critical difference.

Second, I began to think about what happens to blogs after the current events fade in importance. Well, then each post is just a webpage, and to a reasonable approximation, all webpages are eventually relevant only insofar as they attract the attention of search engines. I noted in one of my very first posts that I found Powerline about four years ago because I was searching for an explanation of a news story. In other words, I found them through Google. At some point, Google organizes everything in the blogosphere around what people years from now will find interesting and worth searching.

But is it a good thing for Andrew Samwick to discover the existence of Powerline?

Comments

[Robert]

Do not question the wisdom of the Google. If you do, your traffic will plummet. We are mere cells in the body of the Google leviathan which gives the page rank which is for the best in the best of all possible Google chaches.

Oh and thank you for your spell checker which corrected me when I dared to write Google with a lower case g.

[Robert]

Do not question the wisdom of the Google. If you do, your traffic will plummet. We are mere cells in the body of the Google leviathan which gives the page rank which is for the best in the best of all possible Google chaches.

Oh and thank you for your spell checker which corrected me when I dared to write Google with a lower case g.

[Jon Fernquest]

Well, I have been sitting in my office at the newspaper for a year now and scanning Brad DeLong's blog every morning for insights into the world economy.

I could have become even more drenched in sweat by running over to the university library in town and shuttling between the academic journals and the photocopy machine and then read all the stuff, about a weeks work, but now I can do it in parallel on my computer (aka dual brain processor) while I am doing the work that I was hired for, turning newspaper articles on business and economics into material a teacher can use in the classroom.

"What people find interesting" is ephemeral for sure...

...but trying to run down the truth and trap it in a corner, like the expert bloggers do, so it can run away (like a little greased piggy) to a hidden place where everyone forgets about, for instance the seemlingly random unconnected firings of several attorney generals, like they used to...

...and what all the meaningless flotsam and jetsam roles up into, namely history, is hardly ephemeral.

[Jon Fernquest]

Whew. What I was trying to say is that blogging is like chasing a greased pig, when they finally catch it, it's a keeper.

[ken melvin]

Sure blogs steal from the established, but they provide more and better perspective. In toto, they are more current than any other form of media. Dare I say, 'readers of progressive/liberal blogs are better informed than those who depend on the main stream, especially TV'?

[bigTom]

I think a lot depends on the self-discipline of a blogs universe of readers/commenters. This blog seems to work pretty well, as mostly people don't comment unless they have something they think would be useful to the other readers. As long as we can maintain that model, we can have a conversation of scores of people with diverse backgrounds contributing to the general knowledge when they have something useful, and passively learning otherwise. Hopefully Brad won't have to make use of his power to disemvowel.

[self]

I smell a 'big media' fallacy brewing here. "very little that is inherent to blogging that makes it a superior form...", Pleeeeease ! While coverage of some international and institutional events can only be afforded by mainstream media at a story's inception, the blogs' critical review of frontline journalists' output has already surpassed the capabilities of the editors responsible for big media's coverage of those exclusive coverage events.

What keeps 'big media' competitive is a preference for message control, nothing more. Newspapers and TV stations are today's bad standards in the technology of news delivery and commentary dissemination. They will continue to influence but are no longer the trendsetters in this area.

[Barry]

The key is that it's not the skill or knowledge of the experts; it's the politics of the business.

Very few stories that are broken by bloggers; the MSM has those stories, but prefers not to run them.

Now, suddenly, stories can get vastly more exposure than before, without the aid of the MSM putting them on the front page. This makes the MSM less of a gatekeeper, and undermines their efforts to keep unpleasant (uncomfortable) truths hidden.

[Linkmeister]

Er, looking at the composition of that panel, isn't it the equivalent of 1/2 of the blogosphere clapping?

[nemo]

I know nothing about Andrew Samwick, but I question his judgment on any subject if he finds a panel with that makeup to be "very productive". I was already laughing out loud by the time I saw the first and second names on the panel were Hindraker and Althouse. I was ROTFLMAO when I reached Roger Simon.

Andrew Samwick's life must be very impoverished if he can find no better use for his time than going to hear this panel.

[nemo]

"Now, suddenly, stories can get vastly more exposure than before, without the aid of the MSM putting them on the front page. This makes the MSM less of a gatekeeper, and undermines their efforts to keep unpleasant (uncomfortable) truths hidden."

As I.F. Stone once said of the New York Times and the Washington Post, you'll never know on what page you'll find buried a page-one story.

[elliottg]

Samwick occupies that corner of Prof. Delong's mind where political hacks with economics degrees from revered institutions and good resumes get a pass on their hackery.

[wood turtle]

A lot of people like the comments section. It gives them a chance to express views when they don't have the time to have blogs of their own.

I like the comments section here very much. There is a variety of subject matter, not just straight economics.

Plus, the host, a well-known scientist of the armchair type, does not mind too much if you poke fun at him in a good natured way. It probably gets him out of buying coffee for his fieldworkers.