December 11, 2004

The UnSolitary Cybercrowd: Over 5 Million Served

December 11, 2004: 8:43 AM Pacific Time

TECHNORATI'S MAIN PAGE : 5,002,014 weblogs watched. 718,687,874 links tracked.
"Nobody goes online anymore, it's too crowded."

Going online and being online are not solitary experiences. If they were, only hermits would bother with them.

If all online was was a only collection of data bases, data dumps, bots, and a hoary assemblage of mediators/librarians/whatever ... then we'd see a lot less emotion, time, and thought expended on it. Many people read and are moved by various online interactions. Few people are moved by encyclopedias and databases although all would agree they are useful. Even if online were all of the world's records stored on an infinite hard drives and accessible to all at any moment, it would still be nothing more than a card catalogue as high as the sky. We'd use it but it wouldn't seem any more compelling than the reference section.

Quite the contrary, online is a state that evolves from the wish not to be solitary. It arises from the desire to be "connected" on a new level to others -- to their knowledge, their businesses, their tastes as they choose to reveal them, to their personalities as they choose to construct them. The gravitational attraction of online for people is other people.

WiFi cybercafes, as a group, are emblematic of this state. Where a cafe's business plan once stopped at beverages, sandwiches and pastry, one that does not offer WiFi today is a cafe heading for oblivion. Those that offer free WiFi are the one's heading for success. Touted by the cafe conglomerate Starbucks as "the third place" in American life, the addition of WiFi to this place weaves all those places into a single space that is both of and beyond the physical location in which an espresso and a laptop rests on a table.

This drive to reach through the abstract nature of the experience to something more concrete is one of the primal power sources of the Net. It drives the metaphors and the metaphors are key to how humans perceive and use the medium: "cyberSPACE," "virtual COMMUNITY," "Where do YOU want to GO today?" and "LiveJournal" to cite a few. That's why we respond on a deeper level to personal home-brew blog pages than we do to something like Apple's movie trailer site -- even though the utility of the latter seems to be larger than the former.

We're pack animals, although we call our origins "tribal" to differentiate ourselves from beasts. As pack animals we try to assemble a group around us in life that augments and extends our

experiences, our skills, and our aspirations. Before the advent and extension of the Net, this process was limited by geography and time. By accepting this medium as an extension of the self's possibility to find and forge connections with others on a deep and immediate level, we expand our personal possibilities, deepen our connections with others, and enhance our lives. The drive to expand and deepen the Net is the drive to connect with others. That's what catches the attention of people once they come online and "get it" (Not everyone does but that may have more to do with an individual's capability to form abstract relationships than it does with any limitations of the medium. )

In the present form of connection where all individuals work first and foremost with words, this connection can deepen more rapidly than encounters in the real world. As my Mike Godwin of Godwin's Law has commented (and I paraphrase), "The problem with ASCII text is not that we fail to understand each other, but we understand each other all too well. We're mainlining each other's thoughts."

This is why blogging is expanding the Net more rapidly than any other force today. Blogging is not just some mere "value-added" item over and above the act of passing on information. The human interaction itself is the primary value and reason people continue to join and expand the Web and the Net. They arrive, depart, and reconnect again to break down the solitary nature of contemporary life in the real world; to make it more multiple, more multifoliate than previously thought possible.

Everything else -- technology, hardware, CEOs strutting and fretting about their latest new and "exciting" interface, site, knowledge 'product", business, reports, analysis, projections -- are merely the dim background against which the work of connecting all the sentient human minds on the planet goes forward in an inexorable manner, day in and day out, and will until it is finished. At which point, it will never be finished, but transformed into a full partner to the unfolding works and days of the Earth.

If the growth of the web feels exponential (and it does), it is because of the fact that every single person who "goes online" in even a partially committed way brings the entire universe of who they are, what they know, and what they have and are experiencing.

In a book I wrote in the stone age of the web I observed that one of the 12 Commandments of Cyberspace is "You have to give to the Net to get from the Net." The Net thrives not from the proliferation of Web sites and the piling up of data and knowledge but from the people behind those Web sites. The deepening comes not from the sheer numbers but from the extent to which they heed the command to Hamlet's Ghost and "Stand and unfold yourself." That's why cyberspace is constantly surprising and interesting. The Net has made "The Lonely Crowd " of the 20th century's epoch of alienation defunct. The Net is the most "unsolitary" experience ever made available.

It is that way because the primary desire of the human race is not to "Search" but to "Find."

[If you enjoyed this article and others at this site, please vote at the 2004 Weblog Awards: Best Essayist]

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Posted by Vanderleun at December 11, 2004 8:48 AM | TrackBack
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AMERICAN DIGEST HOME
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

5,002,014 blogs maybe, but 4,950,000 of those are still 13-year old girls bitching about how their on/off boyfriend is, like, so immature.

Posted by: sortapundit at December 11, 2004 10:31 AM

I have posted a link to this article on the Bloggers and Personal page of the Free Republic at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1299326/posts . Aside from the except of the first three paragraphs, my initial comment was: "Outstanding comment on communities like FR (and DU too). Vanderleun has put his finger right on the pulse."

Posted by: DrPat at December 11, 2004 10:39 AM

But it only takes one blog to make a difference. Just ask LGF. Or Powerline. Or Instapundit. Or...

Posted by: Bill Peschel at December 11, 2004 11:12 AM

It's a great story. And I really feel vindicated, because I stumbled on an almost identical number simply by doing the math back in March when debunking a really lame CNN/AP story with the headline, "Study: Very few bloggers on Net".

Posted by: Ed Driscoll at December 11, 2004 3:28 PM

I asked the Moderator to pull the Bloggers and Personal post after I saw you had posted the item on the News/Activism forum.

sortapundit, the 4.95 million teenie blogs you cite are PART of the that urge to open up that this essay discusses. And I would argue that they ALL make a difference - to the blogger.

I just saw a post some kid had left on a school blog in which she said (rather wistfully, I felt) "you must be a cool teacher to use a blog so creatively. when I had English 9 last year, there were no blogs." Then she referred the reader to visit her blog.

Made me think of the tagline current when I was at college: "Yesterday I couldn't spell enjineer, and today I are one..."

Posted by: DrPat at December 11, 2004 4:54 PM

Yup. You're still the best :-)

Posted by: Harvey at December 12, 2004 9:28 AM

The youthful bloggers will, in time, become the wave of advanced blogging tomorrow. Much like growing up with a PC.....something my generation did not do.....growing up with a blog will almost insure the writer will advance as maturity/education dictates to more advanced blogging groups.....though most certainly there is nothing to indicate if those bloggers will be redneck auto mechanics/educators/engineers/or perhaps frustrated would-be journalists.

Duke of DeLand
http://pekinprattles.blogspot.com

Posted by: Duke DeLand at December 12, 2004 10:51 AM

Whether it's 50k influential blogs or 5 million, it is still very early days. True, the majority of blogs will likely remain the online equivalent of "Dear Diary" and that's fine. Over time, the blogosphere will sort out this flourishing spring into the hardy perennials, the hothouse orchids, the one offs, and the weeds. We might make some guesses as to which are which, but I suspect it will be a couple more years (at least one election cycle) before we have a real sense of the blogosphere nation.

Posted by: MartiniPundit at December 13, 2004 10:02 AM
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