Senator Andrew Bartlett
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
 
The ever-expanding blogosphere
I've spent most of the past two weeks hanging around at home, reading a low - moderate amount of newspapers, watching a small amount of cricket and regular snippets of news updates on the tsunamis horrors and very little else except for the weekly episodes of West Wing and South Park.

Apart from spending a lot of time with my little girl, most of the rest of my time’s been spent at the computer (much easier after she goes to bed - she seems to have a built in sensor that lets her know when I'm at the computer. Just when I get settled into reading or typing she comes to ask for something.) Some of this time has been spent clearing a big backlog of emails, but I've also been looking through a whole lot of blogs – and there's certainly a huge number and variety of them out there.

There's no doubt blogs provide a lot of potential for fresh and different expressions of views and more open flows of information. However, I'm also reminded of an analogy between blogs and old-style soapbox speakers in City parks. In theory great for freedom of speech, but not of much value if there's only a bunch of pigeons as the audience. (Of course, many blogs are not news or politics focused.) So whilst the ever-expanding blogosphere has some good potential, exactly how valuable it will be is still very much a moot point.

Have a look here at a piece entitled "Blog explosion" for some interesting information on the big expansion in blogs.

And I wouldn't say its totally scientific or representative, but voting has started on the 2005 Australian Blog Awards. As this site isn't nominated, I can totally impartially recommend that you click on this link if you want to vote.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, January 04, 2005
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