So, I was surfing a couple of days ago, trying to get a feel for why so many continued to be in favor of the US invasion of Iraq, and ended up on Pejman’s site, not realizing that his blog is, in fact, fairly widely read. An offhanded comment led to a further exchange, which led to, well, exasperation.
This isn’t the case with some of the reasoning folks I know on the right. Gary shocked me yesterday by admitting to hubris in his earlier calls for an invasion, though he maintained his desire to expand the American Empire. But, unfortunately, I fear Gary and I remain in a minority: people pretty far apart on the left-right spectrum who are not ideologues, who are willing to reason with one another and have a desire to understand why there is a difference of opinion.
In all of the talk of “emergent democracy,” I wonder if, in fact, blogs are instead doing what everyone worried the web would do. Are we talking to each other, or are we only reading those with whom we agree? Instapundit will not make my blogroll any time soon, but I think this is a worthwhile question.
5 Comments
You said: “we talking to each other, or are we only reading those with whom we agree?”
I’ve been thinking about the right research design to study this question. It’s an interesting one.
On really controversial issues, I’d rather read people w/ whom I disagree. I don’t expect it to convince me that I’m wrong – but it could provide me with more reasons as to why I’m right. That’s why I tune in to Fox News at least once a day.
I read Instapundit just to see what Mr. Reynolds is linking to. I read the links, and draw my own conclusions.
Eszter: I haven’t been talking about it on the blog, because it is really immature at this stage, but I am trying to functionally identify “memes” and trace their appearance automagically. I’ll be posting on this soon!
Kara: Question, then: Why isn’t Instapundit on your blogroll :)?
It isn’t on my blogroll – it used to be, but I moved it to my “war and peace” section, just above the blogroll. (kind of like how I’m not on your roll, but under the Informatics section – you can’t see when I ping.)
Kara: Doh! I didn’t see it there :). I have Virginia Postrel on mine, though it teeters :).
As for pinging & updating, I will eventually move everyone off the blogroll, per se, since I hope to put up a server-based aggregator.