There are so many fine words which frequently will stray far from their standard meaning, and enclose a temporal significance which enhances and alters our understanding of them. Some of these for example are 'participatory', 'community', 'open', words that were -and still are- associated with the Web 2.0 trend, of which blogs were, and are the central core.
At first blogs were electronic journals, and as such were an on-line collective of their author's first hand experience, and soon they were recognized as an excellent reporting tool outside the organized media's control and into the public domain. Soon enough however, the fad, thanks to the easiness with which anyone could get published, resulted in the creation of millions of blogs, of which in reality only a very small fraction have any significance or importance. Collective testimonials (related or not to the public domain) were replaced by collective opinions on a multitude of matters. With the exception of subject specific blogs (which usually have multiple authors), personal blogs usually drift from one subject to another, with no care or caution, emulating essentially anyone from traditional media column writers (with bloggers reproducing news articles and mimicking popular opinions of one side or the other) to radio show hosts and stand-up comedians.
To put it bluntly, blogs, by and large, are now a collective unsubstantiated ranting which confuses and at the same time glorifies its participants. Neglecting the innumerable blogs that are essentially link-farms, marketing side-arms, propaganda tools and traffic driven dribble with hordes of content writers supporting them, blogging has unfortunately created a subdued participatory culture that in all its earnesty is shameful. The couch potato left the TV for the PC, and became the chair god of her/his own little world, protected by ready-made CSS styles, witty remarks and supportive comments by friends and relatives. Creativity has been replaced by emulation, arguments by comments, ideology by fragmented ideas, and activism by ridiculous self-satisfying support banners. It is now much safer and convenient to have ideas rather than act upon them. In as much as automatic spell-checkers have worsened our average spell checking abilities, blogs have numbed our reaction nerves towards community and global issues in an unprecedented manner. Through some inexplicable mechanism, information and opinions have turned from cornerstones of reactionism to the veil of apathy and self-indulgence.
Blogs and the Internet are not of course to blame. Such Web 2.0 criticism has touched other similar 'you' innovations, like Wikipedia, Youtube, Facebook and others, in a rather disappointing realisation that despite all the developing efforts and the fascinating ideas, the Internet as a whole, similar to so many other aspects of our social and economic activities (arts, TV, politics, etc.), and like the tool it is, serves as a mere reflection of our culture and civilization and not as a panacea to our shortcomings.
Sure enough Web 2.0 delivered most of it's promises, except mostly for the 'collective intelligence' functioning as the best and ultimate determinant of what is valuable and important. Few know for example that Tufts University has an astonishing easy to access
collection of ancient Greek and Roman texts (both in the original and translated versions), while more than 120 million are struggling to place Avril Lavigne's 'Girlfriend' video to Youtube's all time number one. Sure enough, I am not deviously struggling to demean Avril's vocal contribution to the arts, but the point I am simply trying to make is that popularity does not guarantee quality, objectivity, value and professionalism, but it merely echoes public acceptance.
As a consequence, it seems that Web 2.0 has succeeded in empowering the people, and the people have failed to do much with the new tools available to them. Although the Internet, along with the many other derivatives of the micro-chip economy, plays an important role in our everyday life, it has not changed much in the broader spectrum. The issues concerning and affecting the general public as well any individual are still pretty much the same as twenty years ago (with the possible exception of copyright issues that have been with us for a long period of time), and I personally cannot think of one single issue that has been resolved in it's entirety thanks to new technologies.
This all goes to prove that regardless of the easiness with which a 21st individual can perform certain tasks (communicate and commute, create in any form or shape, interact with systems of all sorts and with other individuals), there are other fundamental elements of her/his society that shape and direct her/his quality of life and extend her/his spirit, like decision-making ability (in contrast to opinion expressing), justice, education and independent critical thought (in contrast to unbiased acceptance of the popular opinion) and economic functioning just to name a few that have been tantalising our civilization for more than 3000 years.
Here we stand then. Where we go does not depend much on the new technologies reading themselves to be introduced to our normality, but how much are we willing to drive ourselves to something that is true tangible, and is not necessarily described by a <style> tag.
P.S. It goes without saying that the present blog exhibits most if not all the symptoms of the 'bad blog' pathology...
Αυτό με κρατά σε αυτή την ηλίθια μίζερη επιφάνεια, αέρας γεμάτος ψέματα και υποκρισία, 'ίσως' και 'μπορεί'. Έτσι κρατιέμαι, δεν πνίγομαι, δεν πρόκειται να πνιγώ ποτέ, όσο τυχαία, ή άτυχα πρόσωπα αντικαθιστούν το ένα το άλλο. Ο πολιτισμός της προσωπικής μου μιζέριας είναι αυτός που με ταΐζει με φτηνά λικέρ, σκονισμένα αδιάβαστα βιβλία, φαντασιόπληκτες μαθηματικές εξισώσεις, ειρωνεία και σαρκασμό σε μαγνητοσκοπημένα μπουκαλάκια εφήμερης ξεγνοιασιάς και σκοτεινές φωτογραφίες, πάντα σκοτεινές φωτογρφαφίες, πρόχειρες εμφανίσεις της φωτογραφικής μηχανής του μνημονικού μου. Η καθημερινότητα μου, μια συλλογή από ξεχασμένες στιγμές που βυθίζονται σε ένα ναυάγιο τσέπης με εμένα τον μοναδικό πάντα επιζώντα. Αυτά βυθίζονται κι εγώ αναπνέω σε μια θάλασσα τόσο ήρεμη που θα αρρώσταινε ακόμη και τον πιο φοβισμένο ναυτικό. Ούτε τα χέρια μου δεν απλώνω να πιαστώ από εκείνα, όλα αυτά που με το βάρος τους το αληθινό ταξιδεύουν στον σκοτεινό πυθμένα των ονείρων μου.
