From The Register: Having spent the last month reading evangelists and critics of blogging, this article from Andrew Orlowski, writing about a quote attributed to Dave Winer, resonates with me:
[Winer wrote:]“A voter with a weblog is ten times more powerful than a voter without a weblog, because there’s more [to] voting than just going in and flipping a lever.”Too true, Dave, too true – but at the end of the day, it’s the guy who has gotten the most real levers flipped who wins. That’s what matters: the acquisition and exercise of real power.
Somehow we can’t escape the wicked thought that what Dave is really trying to say, is that people who use his weblog software are more powerful – because they’re using his weblog software. . . .
This is a characteristic of the giddy kind of people who define themselves through computer-mediated relationships. They get terribly excited about people just like themselves using the same software, when all that bounces back from these dead phosphorous LCD screens is something that approximates their own reflection, and isolation. Bits and bytes are useful – but they’re not where real power is exercised. . . .
Which is another way of saying that life is about relationships with real people, not virtual ones. And blogging is best understood as a conduit to something better. When that happens, you get the Howard Dean Effect!
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