I'm taking a break from grading my students' web pages to read David Weinberger's ongoing coverage of the Harvard "Votes, Bits, and Bytes" conference. Wish I'd been at the session he wrote about this morning, organized by Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon.
Ethan says that we're here today to talk about blogs as bridges, borrowing Hoder's metaphor from yesterday (blogs as windows that give you insight into someone's world, blogs as cafes where people can talk together, and blogs as bridges). There's something big happening, Ethan says.
Indeed there is.
Omar from Iraq talks about the importance of blogging as a way of routing around propaganda. Then he talks about how the open comments from around the world on his blog helped his nephew "If I visited America a year and a half ago, I would have felt llike a stranger. This time I feel like I'm with friends, and that is the greatest gift I can think of."
This is how I feel, as well. From Norway to Australia, France to Japan, Brazil to South Africa...I have friends around the world now that I would never have had without this blog to facilitate connections. I can say without a flicker of doubt that my blog is the one technological tool that has most fundamentally changed my professional life.
The blogosphere makes a fantastic "third place" to socialize. As you say, it is geography-independent, so you can 'hang' with friends in Germany or China jusy as easily (sometimes *more* easily!) as with friends who live down the street. It has distinct advantages over cafes and bars: you don't have to buy anything, it's always open, it's searchable, and you're not drowned out in conversation by the sound of the espresso machine or the PA. :) Although admittedly, comment spam is far more annoying than the espresso machine...