The chapter in the latter half of this book that I found the most interesting was the one about blogs, appropriately titles Everyone's an Author. The first thing I thought was interesting was that the author pointed out that reading has always been valued over writing. There are cultural reasons for this. Reading has come to be viewed as something that's "edifying and mind-expanding", while "governments, religious groups, businesses, and schools regard writing as something that must be channeled, censored, even licensed, so that reading materials are appropriately shaped..."
However with the digital explosion, specifically that of the web log, or blog, anyone can be an author. This touches on a subject that was briefly discussed during the book panels on Tuesday. When we were asked about the difference between something professional and something being amateur, then further asking what we think may be blurring the lines between the two nowadays. The first thing that popped into my head was access. With all of the advancements in technology, more people are able to voice their opinions than ever before. These days, people can bypass all of the formalities authors once had to perform in order to get published. These range from diary-like posts about the author's personal/daily life, to specialty blogs, to blogs where people rant about x,y & z. This is where people can run into trouble. There are many cases in which people are let go from their jobs or suspended/expelled from school because of things they have said in their blog. This even can even apply to one's personal blog. Especially if it can be "viewed as insulting, disruptive, bad for morale, or - worst of all, in the boss's eyes - useful to economic competitors." Because of this, a lot of large corporations have established rules/etiquette for their employees that have blogs.
A part I found extremely interesting an example where a local politician felt he was being defamed by an anonymous blogger, but Delaware Chief Justice Myron Steele did not find it to be so simply because of the nature of blogs. He basically said that it's "because blogs are interactive forums for the expression of opinion, not fact." Also, he mentioned that mistakes on blogs are immediately correctable, so if this politician really wanted to set the record straight, it was very do-able.
That leads me into another point that I found to be very interesting that somewhat conflicts with Steele's view of blogs. The book states that: "86 percent of blog readers consider blogs useful sources of information. In contrast, conventional news sources actually flunked the information test: 82 percent of those surveyed found TV news worthless or only somewhat useful for news or opinion, and slightly more than half said the same about newspapers and magazines." I can't help but wonder what is responsible for this difference in views. Perhaps it's generational? Maybe people who have more or less grown up with computers feel that there is more variety on the web, as opposed to conventional news sources which they may view as biased.
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