If Bob Dylan wanted to use statistics, he'd make them up. Half of the time's he's talked to a journalist over the years he's pulled the journalist's leg, contriving playful answers meant to needle the journalist for asking dumb questions or not thinking very hard about the answers he's given. He just makes stuff up in interviews. It's performance art, it's ad-libbed poetry, it's a mockery of the flat-footed inhabitants of the straight-laced world. #
But when he said about his early songs that he wrote songs that he wanted or needed to hear, that rings true to me.#
Seems like 92% of the time you yearn for a truth to be spoken in the world, you're going to have to speak it yourself. And 78% of the time a group needs to get together to make a neighborhood better or to protect an institution, we're going to have to assemble that group ourselves. And although 64.3% of blog posts have been written by people dressed too informally to go out into the world on serious business, 17% of those people realize it wouldn't have to be that way.#
In a blog post that begins with an image of a sand castle eroding on the edge of the sea and the observation that "Journalism as we knew it is washing away," Doc Searls also notes that "We should also respect the simple fact that now there is more journalism than ever: in blogs, social media, podcasting, and other places."#
I'm intrigued to think about these two facts side by side. Keeping them together in my mind, I translate them for myself this way:#
The forms of public writing and the institutions and practices we knew as journalism are washing away, but the civic needs those three things were organized to serve remain as urgent as ever. [We know that the old journalism, though built for purpose, didn't always achieve or even remember to try to achieve its purpose.] There is now, however, more journalism than ever, in production as blogs, social media, podcasting, and other places. But great swathes of this new production are not organized, not built to purpose, as the old journalism often was, to serve the same urgent civil needs. There are tools on desks and tables all around us, and great masses of inquiry, speech, and writing going on, but most of this activity and production is not organized around those same urgent civic needs. Not built knowingly and thoughtfully to that purpose. And the essential freedom of speech on the web -- if it endures -- requires that a single tight organization never be attempted. But literal and virtual localities can be organized and new forms of inquiry and production can be built to purpose. Tools exist or can be adapted or invented; teams can be assembled. #
We don't entirely know what that will be like, but that's okay, as long as people in different informal groups don't wait to explore and to undertake the work.#
If Bob Dylan wanted to use statistics, he'd make them up. Half of the time's he's talked to a journalist over the years he's pulled the journalist's leg, contriving playful answers meant to needle the journalist for asking dumb questions or not thinking very hard about the answers he's given. He just makes stuff up in interviews. It's performance art, it's ad-libbed poetry, it's a mockery of the flat-footed inhabitants of the straight-laced world. #
But when he said about his early songs that he wrote songs that he wanted or needed to hear, that rings true to me.#
Seems like 92% of the time you yearn for a truth to be spoken in the world, you're going to have to speak it yourself. And 78% of the time a group needs to get together to make a neighborhood better or to protect an institution, we're going to have to assemble that group ourselves. And although 64.3% of blog posts have been written by people dressed too informally to go out into the world on serious business, 17% of those people realize it wouldn't have to be that way.#
In a blog post that begins with an image of a sand castle eroding on the edge of the sea and the observation that "Journalism as we knew it is washing away," Doc Searls also notes that "We should also respect the simple fact that now there is more journalism than ever: in blogs, social media, podcasting, and other places."#
I'm intrigued to think about these two facts side by side. Keeping them together in my mind, I translate them for myself this way:#
The forms of public writing and the institutions and practices we knew as journalism are washing away, but the civic needs those three things were organized to serve remain as urgent as ever. [We know that the old journalism, though built for purpose, didn't always achieve or even remember to try to achieve its purpose.] There is now, however, more journalism than ever, in production as blogs, social media, podcasting, and other places. But great swathes of this new production are not organized, not built to purpose, as the old journalism often was, to serve the same urgent civil needs. There are tools on desks and tables all around us, and great masses of inquiry, speech, and writing going on, but most of this activity and production is not organized around those same urgent civic needs. Not built knowingly and thoughtfully to that purpose. And the essential freedom of speech on the web -- if it endures -- requires that a single tight organization never be attempted. But literal and virtual localities can be organized and new forms of inquiry and production can be built to purpose. Tools exist or can be adapted or invented; teams can be assembled. #
We don't entirely know what that will be like, but that's okay, as long as people in different informal groups don't wait to explore and to undertake the work.#