I’ve been reading (and will comment on later) Keen’s “The Cult of the Amateur”. What struck me is that Keen is seeing bloggers as taking over the journalism arena. I’ve tended to see bloggers as more of a continuation of/ return to the rich oral traditions we had, and still exists in areas such as Papua New Guinea and many others. Dave Snowden puts this nicely:
One of the really interesting things when you start to deal with fragmented narrative (of which blogs are a subset) is the realisation that you are returning to an older oral tradition in which stories evolved in their retelling.
The difference is the size of the audience; rather than just the local village and passing story tellers, we can reach a much bigger audience. Yes, far more of it is the unknown passing story teller but, with time, some get to be known and trusted.
It is all about the story! It is what makes people tell them and what makes people listen to them.