On blogs and James

I've been wrapped up in some other projects and have been a little absent from To the Beat the past couple of weeks so I thought that I'd comment on some of David's recent posts.

I also love that blogs offer the ability cite on the fly with hyperlinks. Add to that the ability to embed media (think of all of the YouTube embeds on this blog) and you clearly have something very attractive. On top of that, they're pretty easy – and cheap, even free – to use, so they've created a complex, multi-media publishing platform that's accessible – for good and bad – to millions, even of people. Blogs seems so commonplace now, a week before election day 2008, that it's easy to forget how revolutionary they are. It's really cool stuff.

But the coolest part of blogging, IMO, are the comments. Think back to a time, long ago, when newspapers were published only in print. A deep thinker, maybe Andrew Sullivan, would write an opinion piece and the next day letters would flood in to the newspaper, commenting on the article. The newspaper would probably choose two or three and print them. End of story. If the article was on a really hot topic, perhaps there'd be a couple of volleys of responses, maybe even, on rare occasions, with the author responding as well. With blogs it can all happen in a flash. The platform is built for dialogue. Nine times out of ten, this is a good thing.

That said, this bozo thinks that blogging is so 2004. He may be right, but I don't think so. I think that what he means is that it's not as easy as it once was to write a blog and get famous. That's probably so, but what's making the internet so much fun in 2008 is that it's allowing hundreds of thousands of subcultures to develop, find an audience, and thrive. It's kind of the same thing with music. Music is cheaper than ever to produce and distribute and as a result many more bands are reaching a wider audience than ever before. Fewer of them are selling more than a million records. I don't think that's a bad thing. I actually think it's pretty good. The music world is getting richer, more multifaceted. Same thing with blogs and journalism. Who knew ten years ago that there was a niche for the musings of a traveling chemist or a novice beekeeper?

But enough about blogs, what about that James Brown, huh? Once again, David's James Brown links have me in awe. He really was bad bad super bad now, wasn't he? Even badder than the baddest bad. And I say that King of Pop's dance steps got nothing on the Godfather of Soul's. Can I get a comment?