Pinkie’s Realm

After reading Dan Burstein’s introduction, “From Cave Paintings to Wonkette” in his book Blog! (co-written with David Kline), I found that his enthusiam for digital revolution left me both intrigued and skeptical. Though I fully agree with him that blogging is indeed a modern source of more reliable, and trustworthy reports of world news, I don’t believe that it will fully change the world. Blogging and online communication, without a doubt, does have an international effect on the opinions of bloggers and other citizens egarding political matters, as well as the spreading of truth. The fact of the matter is, however, more people are likely to sit down on their couch and watch the TV to hear the news reports rather than search for more credible reports that can be found on the internet. I, more than most people, do not trust the media and believe they omit vast amounts of information, likely due to government intervention. Though I wish  blogging indeed could change the world and spread the truth, I know that the news on television is still the primary source that even bloggers go to, to discuss what they really believe happened.
     And as far as his 12 key ideas are concerned, I do actually agree with most of them. His third key idea however is by far my favorite. He states that, ‘blogging, in addition to being a huge phenomen in its own right, is the key metaphor for interactivity, community-building, and genuine conversation: one to one, one to many, many to one, many to many’. Even in my freshmen year of high school I had an online journal of sorts. I don’t believe any of us called it a ‘blog’ at that time, we just called them ‘online journals’ or something of the sort. Livejournal and Xanga journals were the most popular: they were free, and anyone could join. That way multiple people could interact and read each others posts. Some people used them to record stores and ideas and could even maintain anonymity if they chose to. Soon myspace came along, then facebook with privacy settings. The point is, the internet is now endless. There are so many sources of information and people speaking out, and waiting to be heard, in virtually every way. Maybe blogging can’t change the world for good, but it certainly is making a difference.