I think what the blog is, it's a person's attention, it's quest over time on the Internet. So it's a person writing a daily journal, that is, their thoughts, what they are doing, what they are thinking, who they care about, things that they want to talk about, products they like, companies they hate, you know, things that they love, people that they love, sharing is what it's all about.
Any kind of a blog is a public email to the world, and because in fact the tools are very similar, so you can write something in a blog editor which works just like you are writing an email, the only difference is that instead of having send, then you email goes out just for that one friend of yours or just a group of people that you are writing to, if it's published on the web and it's available for any one to see, and to subscribe to, so that people can now all of sudden begin a relationship with you, so that as you write things, they can actually be informed when you write.
I am not sure about competitive, although certainly there are areas where bloggers are tempting to compete with mainstream media. I personally look at it as a much more symbiotic relationship. The top thing is that the media is becoming even more democratized. The amount of money that it takes for a person to be able to become a publisher and be able to continue to do it on the Internet has now essentially become zero, and so the only thing that's difficult now is, are you a brilliant writer, do you have interesting ideas.
And now you can use other types of media as well, so video blogs, and podcasts of audio programs that you can create. So in effect where we used to have freedom of the press as long as you are able to afford one, now any one can afford one and that means that, literally millions of people around the world are able to get the thoughts out and express it.
That doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be out there trying to change the world or compete with mainstream media, in some cases it's simply just getting your passions out and finding people of like mind and having that ability to communicate with literally millions of other people over the Internet in such an inexpensive way, it's fundamentally democratic and it's also quite revolutionary.
So what that means is, it used to be that if we watched something on television or we read something in the newspaper, the only recourse we have would be to yell at our television set, yaaah! they're wrong or, pointing you know, that article was all wrong, you would write a letter to the editor and if you were lucky, may be six letters a day would get published in the newspaper. And so we as human beings felt powerless, and I think that the interesting thing that blogs give us is a rebirth in civics and so, just like the Palaseum behind me and this is why it's such a wonderful place to be talking here, that a place where democracy helps to -- that was created in Rome and thrived, in Greece and Rome and these wonderful places, that I think I am starting to see a rebirth in civics as well around the world, where people no longer had to feel powerless, that they are only yelling back at the television set, but now that they can sit down, then they can blog about it, they can write about it, and they can reach other people, who feel the same way as they do and that's fundamentally political and it's fundamentally powerful.
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