Posts
Every step further into the use of blogs opens a new door to their use and the effect of blogs on our lives. Researching blogs online or in hard copy, whether in blogs, professional research or through news media, will certainly reveal what blogs are technically, Just finding millions of blogs and hundreds of providers and dozens of features certainly tells us a lot about blogs. But what about it's big and long term effect on people.
For example, if you were to research what was the Gutenburg's printing press, the first reaction was a device for printing, but a more in-depth answer would include the transformation in the church (people could access the Bible and read it themselves and establish their own ideas about God), and it might include stories about the opposition to the press because it would ruin the skill of storytelling as people read more and didn't have to rely on oral stories.
So what have blogs done to our civilization?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think its exciting to be part of a changing world. It's true that few people are as skillful at oral storytelling in todays world, but then isn't that kind of what movies and TV are today?
ReplyDeleteAnd our written stories have seen a great increase and can be passed on from generation to generation with little fear of being lost.
Blogs have empowered people from all educational and socio-economic backgrounds to write and share their written work. I have worked with students who say they don't like to write or read but they are happy to blog or at least read a blog. Blogs are changing our idea of learning, information, reading and writing. The printing press brought the written word to ordinary people but blogs bring us the interactive written word. Instead of just reading static content, we can ask questions and offer opinions and this us more more interested in the content.
ReplyDeleteCommunication scholar Marshall McLuhan said that our world was changed by specific technologies and that these technologies caused major cultural shifts. McLuhan said that the electronic age brought the world together. He also said that we rely on sounds more than sight in the electronic age. McLuhan died before the blogging age, but I think he was wrong. We still rely on print and visual media to read and respond to blogs roughly as much as we rely on sounds for audio media.
McLuhan information comes from E. Griffin's A Brief Look at Communicaton Theory and http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~br373197/tdbmr.htm