Can Utopia This?
One of the most interesting disconnects among the BloggerConners was
whether bloggers are the vanguard of an exciting renaissance or is blogging
just business
as usual. This was a common theme at the conference, reverberating from the
first session through the last. Heh, maybe I just go to sessions
where optimism has a place at the table.
It seemed to me that the eldest attendees tended to be more
optimistic and the younger less so. Chris
Lydon, Jeff Jarvis, Dave, Doc (and I)
see blogging as profoundly important. An exception to that observation was
the ever-youthful Esther Dyson,
who didn't seem to buy the euphoria expressed in the session, on the grounds
that
the
blogging "elites" may feel optimistic, but that would not be the
effect on the rest of the world.
Such cautionary advice prompted me to observe that no one
in the room had been part of the blogging elite when they started, but
the effect of
their blogging had a profound effect on them and their connectivity. Further,
I suggested that our world is utopia, compared
to the world of our great-great-grandparents; that the only thing sucky about
our world is by comparison to the world we now dare imagine, so
daring precisely because of how far we've come and the tools now available
for further improvement. I then added one of my canned
memes, that blogging
is the coffeehouse conversations of the Age of Enlightenment, sure to impel
us forward with the same positive force.
First Magic
Esther later blogged this:
The first magic of blogging, of course, is that everyone
can self-publish. Everyone has a voice. The tools makes that possible.
But the next magic, much harder to achieve, is that everyone wants to
be listened to.
What?!? the candidates don’t read every word the
earnest bloggers post? Don’t they care? Won’t he (or occasionally
she, though not at Bloggercon) reply to at least one question a day?
After all, he spends quality
time with “regular” reporters...
In the blogosphere, there’s
no shortage of airtime, but there’s still a shortage of attention.
And attention is the world's fuel, not content.
However, must a blogger be known to the BloggerConners
to feel the blogging love? Blogging attracts people who want to publish
their words and retains those with a continuing interest in publishing.
When a few of those bloggers publish regularly about their Harper Valley
PTA, they will feel as acknowledged at PTA meetings as many of us did at
BloggerCon. If you have something useful to say, it will be heard
and responded to and you'll be honored in your own land, by enough to be
gratifying. But, as someone reminded the Edwards supporter, you have to earn
your links.
A notable exception to my unreliable perception of optimistic
seniors and skeptical others was
Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com,
who said it well in Sunday's Political session, something like, "If
you see what
happens
in
Meetups, you conclude that [the blogging-political connection] is underhyped."
Are the senior bloggers more optimistic in general than the
younger? If so, might it be because we've seen so many dramatic changes already
and have had a chance to calibrate the effect of technolgy? Regardless of
the reason, I'm a confirmed optimist and likely to stay that way.
You say Dystopia and I say Utopia
Many at the conference seemed to think that we are clearly not now
in utopia. What's a utopia? Ideas are dismissed as utopian if they promise
grand results relying on unreasonable expectations of human nature. A dystopia
seems
to be the result of (often accidental) structures purported to be for society's
good but which fail because of their dependence on humans being more charitable,
law-abiding or civic-minded than they are. Such structures yield a society
that is miserable for most of its members, with little hope for redemption. Bedford
Falls vs. Potterville.
However, our society seems to be particularly at a loss for
clues, especially when the propoganda is ignored. The NeoCons have had
their way with us, and their model looks like naive utopian drivel, assuming
as
it does that wealthy people are inclined to create jobs with their tax
cuts. No, they're inclined to make safe investments in financial instruments
that only incidentally
create jobs, as in Hoover's dystopia. It's a shame the most grasping among
us keep forgetting this lesson.
Given this disconnect, it's time to design a civil society
with highly granular productivity and mutual respect. Yes, that would be
the Xpertweb meme. When
all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Visibility Tech makes a difference
I live in New York City, where cabs never run a red
light. This unlikely Giuliani-era civic-mindedness is not the product of
driver training nor is it solely regulatory–the $150 fine had been
on the books for years. Rather, it depends on an enabling technology. Most
intersections
have cameras recording the passing scene, and offending hacks get their photograph
and $150 ticket in the mail. Thus the large body of Cabdom's unthinkable
acts came to include running a red light, just as mobile booking vans quashed
subway turnstile-hopping, as Malcolm Gladwell described
in Tipping
Point, which exposes the conservative myth of civil
benign neglect,
which is neither civil nor benign:
...tipping points give the lie to conservative policies
of benign neglect. In New York City, for example, one round of cuts in,
say, subway maintenance is justified with the observation that the previous
round of cuts didn't seem to have any adverse consequences. But that's
small comfort. With epidemic problems, as with ketchup, nothing comes
and then the lot'll.
I wonder why conservatives, who cannot countenance an untidy
home or dandruff flake on a serge suit, so naively neglect our shared space?
Even the Bushes can't spend all their time on Jupiter
Island.
Just as traffic cameras put cabbies on their best behavior,
so will Xpertweb's transaction visibility and quality ratings
cause all of us to behave better
toward each other. Then we'll put some real teeth into the conversation of
the marketplace, rather than relying on the NeoCon's wooly-headed, utopian
vision of a functioning society directed from closed board rooms and
government chambers.
10:35:17 AM 
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