Monday, November 20, 2006

i blog therefore i am...

So I am new to a lot of things: empanadas, speaking spanish, blogging to name a few. Apparently blogging is this powerful new media outlet. This weekend, through word of mouth alone, hundereds gathered in front of the planetarium in Buenos Aires for a giant pillow fight which was the result of an idea in San Francisco and some serious blogging by some serious bloggers with some serious blog clout. This level of blogging is unknown to me and, though I didn't attend the pillow war, because I have the spring sickness, the photo in the Buenos Aires Herald the next day made it look like fun. It was an impressive display of the power of the blog.

The next day I am catching up on the Independent and reading their interview with John Stewart who says...
Listen, everything is judged on its own merits. Some blogs earn credibility, some blogs become known for being a resting shop for Photoshop and paranoid theories. It’s like anything else: if you put it out in the public, it gets vetted and that’s the vetting process. Also, there are definitely places where people go to find their own points of view reinforced. Blogs makes that easier. But in the larger perspective, that comes to the fore ultimately as well.
And that night I watch an episode of CSI about blogging and flash mobs. I am learning all the time.

Needless to say I suddenly feel very old, out of touch, and drawn to run out and buy a Blackberry. I barely know how to turn on my iPod. I take comfort in having reformatted my MySpace page without blowing up my computer.