Burnt Orange Report

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Blog Comments

By Jim Dallas

A surreal thing happened today in the blogosphere. I can't really describe it, so just read these two posts:

First. Second.

Look, ever since the beginning of politics and journalism (the second and third oldest professions, respectively), there have been hierarchies which has tended to disregard input from the bottom ranks since the folks at the top tend to generate much, much more noise. That isn't to say that it's purely a power relationship; there's a rational reason why the top dogs get to the top. Still, the stratification of power tends to have a rather suppressive tendency. And when issues of concern do wind their way up the food-chain, it's usually in a highly-digested form (with credit not always going to where it is due).

I guess it was only a matter of time before this latest experiment in dot-communism eventually resulted in such blow-ups. That said, some forms of organization are considerably more permissive of bottom-up percolation.

Bets may now be placed on how long, if ever, the blogosphere will take to organize itself into an optimal information-synthesizing institution.