THE PAST YEAR has seen the rise of the blog in Britain, as ever with such social trends, some 18 months behind our colonial cousins. To those of us taking part it is the most exciting invention since that pre-cut loaf thing and for everyone else a suitable reaction is a resounding “Sorry? Blog? What’s that?”

The technical answer is that a blog is simply a few tweaks of a standard web page to make it easy to link to something elsewhere, comment upon it, quote from it, publish it on the web and thus enable others to do so further, in a continuous chain of conversation on whatever it is that caught the originator’s fancy. Put like that, it seems a strange thing to be taking the world by storm. In 1999 there were four of them; now there are more than 20 million, 300,000 in the UK alone.

The key word is “conversation”, as there is almost nothing else that we humans like to do more. And even in that one more obviously popular activity, as any young one out on the pull will confirm, chatting a little before and after is still regarded as part and parcel of the experience. Technology that makes communication easier is always eagerly adopted but it is important to remember that the blog is just that, a technology, not a social revolution. Innovations do not themselves change the world; it is the use to which they are put that can do that.

This new opportunity allows people to swap their views and information, much as they would in any saloon bar or over the garden fence. The big difference is that they are no longer constrained by distance or location; so that the tricky explanation of the correct use of a crochet hook, derided in the Dog & Duck, does indeed find an enthusiastic audience. If you wish, it is an audience split by interest rather than by locality.

There is one way in which such free-form interaction will have an effect. As Natalie Solent (one of the more astute British bloggers) puts it: “One way in which consensus opinion changes is when scattered individuals become aware that many others share their opinions.” Those who found their ideas ignored or dismissed in the mainstream media (derisively called the MSM or legacy media) are able to find like-minded souls and thus realise that they are not alone.

Political ideas expressed range from the wingnut (roughly the paleo-libertarianism of people like myself) to the moonbat (eco-luddites) with healthy brigades of the tinfoil hat tendency on either wing, and all of the socially acceptable opinions falling somewhere in the middle.

The blog consensus can be wildly at odds with that of the general population: for example, there is one solitary blog in the UK defending ID cards while opinion polls suggest that 70 per cent of the country look forward to the tattooed barcode on their forehead. Exaggeration is also something common to blogs.

The absence of any external editing (and sometimes spelling or grammar checking) should mean that there is simply the most horrendous cacophony; that no one will be able to sort through the dross to find the gold. But the blogosphere is in fact a market, though one based on reputation rather than money. Readers find something they enjoy or respect, comment upon it and so reputations grow, attracting further readers. It is a perfect demonstration of the ability of free markets to process information.

Will all of this lead to the storming of the barricades of the newspapers? The abolition of the distinction between the professional journalist and the amateur? The rise to prominence of the citizen journalist, as some predict? I think not for three reasons, the most trivial of which is that a useful definition of British bloggers is those who imagine there is at least one Comment Page piece in them. The second is that those skills that make a good journalist or editor are also those that make a good blogger: the uncovering of facts, the marshalling of them and their presentation are essential to both. The third reason is that the financial resources necessary to do that uncovering in distant parts are simply not available to bloggers. As far as how the press is organised, the most obvious change will be a wider pool from which to draw material and writers. The industry might move online, might employ more or different people, but the infrastructure of good editing will endure.

The best historical analogy is with the rise of the coffee houses in the 18th century, which coincided with a reduction in the cost of printing (and paper). Neither the technology nor the meeting place, in and of themselves, changed the world; but both Tom Paine and William Cobbett, among others, did so by exploiting them.

There is, however, one more big change happening in the relationship between journalist and reader. We bloggers are no longer passive consumers of whatever we are offered to read or watch; we are able to fact-check what we are offered, complain more about inaccuracies, correct them and in general complain with rather more effect than the traditional shouting at the TV or penning letters to the editor ever managed. As Scott Burgess, another discerning blogger, noted in response to a particular piece of arrogance by a columnist, one should never start an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel. We all buy it by the barrel now.

Tim Worstall’s anthology of the best of British blogging, 2005 Blogged, was published this week

AUTHOR'S CHOICE

www.pootergeek.com Fine satires and parodies

www.dailyablution.blogs.com Scott Burgess drives journalists crazy by fact-checking their assertions

www.theovergrownpath.blogspot.com High culture news and reviews

www.nataliesolent.blogspot.com Libertarianism and sewing

www.chasemeladies.blogspot.com Surreal humour

Peter Stothard, Rugh Gledhill, Charles Bremner and others at www.timesonline.co.uk/weblogs

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