Expand My Horizons

Reading this recent post at Newsome.org, it really got me to thinking about why it is I read blogs. By the way, the hallmark of a good blog post in my mind, is that it got me thinking in the first place.

I read blogs to expand my horizons. I read blogs to educate myself; to satiate my interests and my quest for knowledge. Consequently, I value bloggers who help me do those things. It doesn't matter whether they're 'web-celebrities' (??) or not, I value them. I want people's views on things I'm interested in. I want them to point me to others who do the same.

I don't want to be reading the same 10 blogs to get all my knowledge on any given topic all year long. I want fresh opinions. Kent's point about Dave Winer's suggesting to eliminate the left column at Memeorandum is a good one. Don't get rid of the new voices, that defeats the whole purpose of the blogosphere.

The portion of Dave's entry about 'before the newbies arrived and arrived and on and on' leads me to believe that Kent is probably correct in his assertion that people like Dave are getting pissed about having to share their bully pulpit with others. This goes against the whole notion of the blogosphere. Self publishing is about everyone having a voice. Dude, it's all about the grassroots man.. (excuse my bad hipster imitation). But it is... Man.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think all of the big bloggers are pissed about newbies, but some seem to be definitely getting a bit nervous.

Besides, the whole A-level tech blogging thing is reading more and more like a dungeons-and-dragons themed circle-jerk lately. There are barbecues and parties, mashup-camps, barcamps, breakfast meetups and let's not forget the wild philosophical differences between the conferences and the Un-conferences. Pretty soon they're going to have barcamps solely for the purpose of designing the next un-conference. Sheesh.

Then again, there are guys like Doc Searls who seem to thrive on the idea of disseminating actual knowledge irrespective of the 'status' of the people he points to. But even he sometimes gets bogged down in the orgy of jargon-filled metaphors that seem to pervade the Gillmor Gang as of late. - Interesting that Jon Udell has recently withdrawn from the Gang due to a seeming lack of interest in 'Vendor Sports'.. ahh, another lovely term..

The whole thing is getting a little tiresome actually. Hence the need for fresh voices.

So fellow bloggers, share your knowledge if you've got it. If you have it and you don't share it, you become less valuable to me. And I'm not talking about NDA protected knowledge and industry insider crap. I'm talking about real knowledge, concrete useful knowledge, and pointers to other people who provide this knowledge. Dave's got a wealth of it, I don't doubt it for a second, it just seems that lately he's less interested in sharing that knowledge and more interested in limiting the spread of it.