Weblogs And Emergent Democracy

2 Pages 600 Words

Introduction

Ten years ago, if someone told you that in 10 years there would be just shy of a billion Internet users, more than 100 billion Web pages, and trillions of dollars of commerce based on a globally connected network, you might have thought the person insane. It was difficult to imagine then, as it is difficult to imagine now.

Internet is developing at an escape speed, millions of thousands of virtual communities such as online games, weblogs, social networks, mailing lists, Instant messaging, regular IRC channels, etc, established .Among them, weblog boosts in recent years. Replacing the high-cost, venture-funded Web site with one that is intensely personal and built around the connectivity between people and ideas, weblogs play more and more important role in today’s society. It's no accident that weblogs are increasingly turning up as the top hits on search engines, since they trade in the same currency as the best search engines--human intelligence, as reflected in who's already paying attention to what.

As Joi said developers and proponents of the Internet have hoped to evolve the network as a platform for intelligent solutions which can help correct the imbalances and inequalities of the world. however, the Internet of today is a noisy environment with a great deal of power consolidation instead of the level, balanced democratic Internet.

In 1993 Howard Rheingold wrote[2],

We temporarily have access to a tool that could bring conviviality and understanding into our lives and might help revitalize the public sphere. The same tool, improperly controlled and wielded, could become an instrument of tyranny. The vision of a citizen-designed, citizen-controlled worldwide communications network is a version of technological utopianism that could be called the vision of "the electronic agora." In the original democracy, Athens, the agora was the marketplace, and more--it was where citizens met to talk, gossi...