TedPage

In the wake of the bombings in London, there were several interesting essays at World Changing. One that I found particularly interesting was called: The Democratization of History. It talks about each of us carrying enough equipment (a cell phone) to be a historian, and perhaps history will come more out of these accounts rather than official records in the future. This is interesting, and is even more interesting with sites like Wikipedia where history is being written outside of mainstream academia. Our common definition of truth seems to be changing, though it's hard to say if it is becoming more or less accurate.

What I found most interesting is when you think that most of the pictures shown from the bombing in London are from people who were there, because they got there first. There is no way for a news team to respond faster than someone who is involved in the event itself. So, as we've looked for how blogs are going to destroy the main stream media, perhaps we've looked the wrong direction. Instead of changing how people get their news, perhaps they'll change how news is gathered. Instead of having reporters the evening news will send out lawyers to buy up content rights from the people there. Perhaps we're destroying Dan Rather instead of CBS.

posted on Mon, 11 Jul 2005 at 13:31 | permanent link

I've started to use Bloglines to keep track of all my RSS feeds. The big reason for this is that I couldn't figure out another way to keep track of what I've read on multiple machines. Yeah, they had to share a file somewhere, but there seems to be no standard for that. What I really need is an RSS to IMAP translator, then I can just use a mail client. But, I'm relatively happy with Bloglines.

I've always said that I would never give my attention to web services. I don't want a web based contact manager or e-mail. The big reason for this is that there is no way to get your data out, you're locked into their service. I understand why they do this, but it is frustrating to me as a user. I might as well use Word. Bloglines doesn't do this, you can see all my feeds if you want, and you can even download them as OPML[1] if you so like. This makes me happy, hurray for Bloglines.

posted on Mon, 11 Jul 2005 at 13:31 | permanent link