Sometimes, I wonder about who is reading this blog.
There are various webtools that count hits on the blog website, subscribers to my RSS feed, Twitter followers, or whatever. I have noticed that while there are a lot of you reading, there are not a lot of comments. Perhaps I have attracted a shy demographic readership. Or, so many of you are in positions of influence in corporations or government and, while you may want to shout criticisms or platitudes, your pension-influenced discipline holds you back.
In the early days of my blog, I was told that this medium enables a public conversation. Often, it seems more like a radio talk show – anyone can be a host and no one screens the callers.
A recent tweet from one of the people I follow asks:
Can reasonable debate occur online if people kick back from anonymous posts. its not like we live in Iran
He expounded further on his blog
So is this is what the fight for net neutrality is all about? The right to opine in 140 characters or less and to boil down complex debate into nuggets like “you suck”. Great. With all the opportunity for enlightenment that the Internet offers we get”Pounder” and his ilk instead.
A few years ago, I wrote about “4 degrees of impersonal communications“. The four degrees were: face-to-face; telephone; email; and web-based.
Paradoxically, we seem to take more care in communications when the conversation can most easily be private and candid. Conversely, we pay less attention to etiquette and courtesy when the audience is global and of diuturnal impact.
As more communications moves to 4th degree interactions, how are we preparing to compensate for what are we losing?
Hi Mark,
You observation about the lack of comments compels me to post a comment…perhaps all part of your genius plan 🙂
You noted "Paradoxically, we seem to take more care in communications when the conversation can most easily be private and candid."
In terms of general communications on the Internet, I absolutely agree…although I must say that personally, I tend to take more care in email and online communications than I do in verbal ones. After all, the latter are basically ephermeral, while the former last forever…
Hi Mark,
I find that the 'noise' over the internet can be distracting which prompts a simple self directed concept, 'Embrace selectively, and engage the engaging'.
1a. I find RSS is great for reading but less great for conversing.
1b. If you know of a way to easily track active posts, please let me know. I'm usually doing one of two things: leaving the post open in a tab; or bookmarking the post in a folder dated a week in the future. Neither of these methods feels effective.
2. Pseudo-anonymity should let everybody comment. OpenID let's us create an identity for every persona.