As interesting as I find the idea of blogs being the new media, I think that most reports are overblown. They're just looking for conflict and demise, and trying to turn that into news. But, we are seeing a new era of personal communication, or small group communication. There are now very effective ways for individuals get their message out, and have people find it using search engines. To date, nothing has shown this more than Hurricane Katrina.

Technology review has an interesting article claiming the legitimacy of blogs has increased with the disaster. Cicero has a nice article asking whether the increase in virtual communities has damaged physical ones, thus making us less robust in dealing with physical tragedies (though, I doubt most of the people seriously hurt by Katrina were surfing the web instead of evacuating). And there is a rather chilling letter posted on World Changing. A huge part of me wants that letter to be a big hoax, though I'm not sure that it is.

In the end, we all know that history will be remembered by the mini-series that tells it (or the thriller in Dan Brown's case). Will Katrina's mini-series be one of the Government coming and saving the family or will they have to fight on their own? We won't really know until a year from now.


posted Sep 9, 2005 | permanent link