I think the New Media Reader (NMR) was talking to me about itself-- Well, at least the first two authors were talking to me about the NMR.

I do believe that I have never seen a textbook author refer to the textbook during an article. I actually had to stop reading and ponder over the perplexity of this matter. (Did you like my little alliteration?)

The most interesting quote that I took from the reading was on page 19. In talking about the new "ideological tropes" associated with new media, Lev claims that "it will contribute to 'the erosion of moral values'; it will destroy the 'natural relationship between humans and the world' by eliminating the distance 'between the observer and the observed.'" I have written in my margin: "Holy Poop".

First of all John Barger screams winning documentary short to me; someone in Chicago is looking at a Sundance slot for sure if they make it well. I'd certainly watch it; he's a fascinating person whose life seems a little off kilter, and as Dibbel has already demonstrated, he's a great jumping off point to examine not only blogging but the larger issue of how interaction with an enormous compendium of data and thus abstraction affect the human condition.

It took me a little bit of time to figure out why anyone really cared about the whole blogging phenomenon. In a world where subcultures full of rite and ritual rise and fade into obscurity every few months without most of the world ever knowing, it is impossible to avoid looking upon anything new and supposedly "important" in the internet world without something of a jaundiced eye. Blogs, sure, seem to be making waves, and we seem to all interact with them frequently. But even if Blogging in itself hasn't yet had the impact upon our society that something like television or the atom bomb has for whatever reason, it is nonetheless a point of solid ground from which to start exploring larger issues of human interaction in the age of the mature internet. That's kind of how I feel about it right now; maybe later I'll see the light and realize just how ridiculously important the rise of blogging is, but at this point I'm much more interested in the larger ideas/movements from which blogging stems, and of which it is a result.

First off, I have been completely unaware of how significant blogging can be for members in our society. After reading the two articles, especially "You've Got Blog," it occurred to me what a large role blogging plays in many lives. I further developed my understanding of this phenomenon as I read the passage that states, "Getting blogged by Kottke, or by Meg Hourihan or one of her colleagues at Pyra, is the blog equivalent of having your book featured on "Oprah": it generally means a substantial boost in traffic enough, perhaps, to earn the blog a mention on Beebo.org, which has functioned as a blog best-seller list." From this it became apparent to me that blogging is not only another technological advancement in our world of communication, but an outlet for everyday people to offer personal insight into particular concepts.