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Weblog definitie follow-up
Eerder deze maand zocht ik nog naar de inhoudelijke definitie van weblogs. De reacties bij die posting leverden wel nieuwe inzichten op, maar toch was ik ook met de aangereikte definities niet 100% content. Zojuist kwam ik via Alan Levine uit bij een column van Jon Udell. Een paar citaten:
...The dictionary definition of “blog” is correct, but it says nothing about the network in which the blog participates. By way of analogy, consider a dictionary definition of a telephone: “an instrument that converts voice and other sound signals into a form that can be transmitted to remote locations and that receives and reconverts waves into sound signals.” That’s fine if you already know what a telephone network is, but the definition doesn’t work on its own.(...)
...We can’t say exactly how the trick is done, but we understand the basics: a network, a message-passing protocol, nodes that aggregate inputs and produce outputs. The blog network shares these architectural properties. Its foundation network is the Web; its protocol is RSS; its nodes are bloggers.(...)
...The blog network is made of people. We are the nodes, actively filtering and retransmitting knowledge. Clearly this architecture can help manage the glut of information. More subtly, it can also help ensure that no vital inputs are suppressed because nobody has to rely on a single source. If one of the feeds I monitor doesn’t react to some event in a given domain, another probably will. When they all react, I know it was an especially important event.(...)
Ook Udell komt niet tot een kernachtige inhoudelijke definitie, maar hij zet in dit stuk wel heel duidelijk het raamwerk neer. Goed verhaal, waarin de titel eigenlijk alles al zegt: The Network is the blog.
