The evidence that things are changing fast can be seen in the dramatic increase in the influence of blogging. We should be collecting emails as we used to collect telephone numbers and using them to better communicate our message to key voters.
The first thing you learn when you're blogging is that people are one click away from leaving you. So you've got to get to the point, you can't waste people's time, you've got to give them some value for their limited attention span.
I think, when you're doing a column and blogging every day, you get familiar with the sound of your own voice.
I think something will soon have to be done to protect people from hacking and blogging and lying and spreading rumors and chasing you down the street. Lives are wrecked that way.
I still blog, but I do think blogging will become obsolete, as there are more ways of interacting on the Web with low barriers to entry for people to engage and participate.
My background isn't in social software; it's in online community, social networks, personal publishing, blogging, self-expression on the Web. I got on the Internet in the 1980s, and the magic moment for me arose from my being a literature geek, especially Dante and Shakespeare.
A lot of people, myself included, are excited about blogging and stuff like that, citizen journalism, but I do remind people that no matter how excited we are, there's no substitute for professional writing, no substitute for professional editing, and no substitute for professional fact-checking.
The problem is that with blogging, the model is publish first, maybe fact-check later. In newspapers, the model is you fact check first and then publish. But those models are merging.
I began as a writer and started blogging in 2001, first on politics, anonymously.
I've never done a film before where every single person in the audience knows the ending. I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days. People are blogging your endings from their cinema seats.
