Here’s a great example of sustained and productive conversation supported by (or at least started by) weblogs and, perhaps, a counter-example to the blogging as parallel play argument. Recently, Apple Computer announced that they would be adding four extensions to HTML in order to support new features in the upcoming version of their operating system. This created an uproar in the blogosphere, but the end result (so far, anyway) was that Dave Hyatt, Apple’s chief browser technology engineer, has heard and accepted some good suggestions from the community. As a result of the conversation started in blogs, Apple will change the way its technology works.
But it goes even deeper.This debate is not so much about Apple as it is a part of a larger conversation about how to move browser technology (and standards) forward in general. See this post by XML guru Tim Bray (and follow the links from there, if you want). What we are witnessing is a fast-paced, productive, and broadly inclusive conversation about a topic as important as how the Internet is going to evolve.
Now, lest we lose ourselves in a blorgasm [blorgasm (n): An attack of self-referential extasy, especially when webloggers are talking about the positive attributes of weblogging], a few points are worth noting. First, the main participants in this conversation are uber-hackers, the natural inhabitants of the blogosphere. These are the same guys who can make G-d-awful threaded discussion board interfaces work because they understand that they have to scroll to the top of the page to “reply” to the “parent”. I’m not sure this would work as naturally for people who don’t “get” the technology well enough to be able to find, follow, and appropriately respond to all the relevant threads as they wend their way through cyberspace. Second, we don’t know how much of this conversation, once precipitated by blogging, actually took place in email (though an impressive amount of it is in public blogs).
Anyway, caveats and all, it’s an inspiring example.
