The game has changed. With this whole Golf Course affair, local Politicians have learned the power of Blogs and by extension, a taste of the possibilities that New Media as a whole has to offer. The general public’s awareness of blogs and the power of the internet has likewise changed. Pretty soon, it won’t be just Mar Roxas vying for bloggers’ attention. So, “Are Filipinos Ready for Mar Roxas?”
I digress.
With this new found attention, quite naturally, misconceptions, fear, uncertainty and doubt come into the fray. People are naturally afraid of things they’ve no understanding of. The last time there was an explosion of content was when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press.
New Media— the entirety of digital communications from blogs to podcasts and everything in between has transformed every single person to be a vector of creativity and information. All made possible by the coming of the Internet. The bar to become published has been put so low that everyone can say, do and publish anything to their hearts content and open to a global audience. Limited only of course by their ability to go online.
Yes, that includes that Sex video you have stashed, which may already be on your friendly neighborhood porn site and makes the US$5 Billion dollar bailout the Porn Industry “wants” quite humorous.
The new world order has changed everything. Comments on a blog for example can affect and even change a blogger’s opinion. It can shape opinion as much as a blogger’s. Comments can facilitate a meeting of the minds too. The rapid response is meant to open communication and debate.
That’s part of the game.
YOU can dispute the blogger, just as freely HE or SHE can refute you. Your work, both blogger’s and comment’s is exposed to the world and they can all equally call on you for being stupid or hail you as a genius. All in a matter of minutes, probably both.
The zen part is that there is no control and everyone is in control. In a word: Laissez-faire.
One good post came from Bencard recently in his Thoughts On The Gaza Crisis and The Mindanao Conflict. And I’m sure Sparks is fuming somewhere, ready to argue.
Are you afraid now? Governments and others too timid or too scared to be without the old generally accepted rule book, they naturally fight this new order.
On the other hand this whole Golf affair is a birth pain for bloggers. How do we interact with a low tech universe? How do we converse with the Real World when seemingly we both are talking different things and naturally both are misunderstood? How do we make them understand, that on the Interwebs, Credibility is the Coin by which we converse?
Ding over at midfield makes an excellent point:
My own sources inside VGCC now tell me that not a few Club members feel the Dela Pazes, while “being fast on the draw to report their side in the blogosphere, and thus gained immediate public sympathy cannot now escape the reality of their own provocative misbehaviour.”
Truth does always emerge and the Pangandamans may really have “acted in self defense.”
The question that the courts will now have to decide IS how valid the self defense argument really is and when such action became excessive to the point of how gravely Bino Dela Paz and his 56-year-old father were mauled.One past president of VGCC told me: “Nakatagpo sila ng katapat (They found their match).”
Perhaps.
Secretary Pangandaman found it necessary to directly appeal to bloggers to stop condemning him and his sons, even intimating that his own aging father “was upset by the scandal.”
This writer grants the Pangandamans their bruised feelings, if not anger at bloggers.But such is the public arena, the Filipino public in particular, that personages of rank in the government serving are expected to hold to higher standard of proper conduct in due respect to their exalted stations.
Let hatchets be buried with everyone drawing the necessary lessons in that basic school subject called Good Manners and Right Conduct.
[update-2: fixed link to Ding's Midfield. My apologies, just noticed it.]
There has been a LOT of “I told you so” comments on this whole golf issue. Maybe they haven’t heard of Sun Tzu who wrote a military treatise and argued that “Therefore one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful.”
Anybody can raise an issue and anybody can respond appropriately for or against that issue. Anybody can discern crap. A blogger’s post can readily be judged wrong or hailed right. Inevitably, facts come out as the issue is discussed and the reader can easily discern the right from the wrong. The aggrieved party is already given justice if he proves the other party wrong.
People do this all the time.
A few days ago, on Big Mango, I sarcastically blogged against a silly little issue that Panay Times posted saying, “Congress should regulate Use of the Internet”. @sofimi in a comment to that post, was of course correct. We shouldn’t waste brain power on stuff like that. I’d like to share the video that @sofimi directed to my attention to:
History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.
And you know what? Blogs and New Media calls for good old fashioned thinking, reasoning and reading. That’s another power of New Media. It requires people to think and to discern.
updated added link to above cartoon: xkcd’s “duty calls“.
Most apt, wouldn’t you say?
If you’ve gotten this far, I’m sure you’ve read ”Ilustrados Bravos!“ from DJB that came out a few days back, he wrote:
We are the carriers of mental virii. The kind that infect the brains of readers and listeners such that they cannot but think the thing their own and gladly, if secretly, surrender to the logic of being convinced, of being inspired and energized to act, to think, to feel. Or to violently disagree. But do it well, Blogger. Do it beautifully! For there is precious little bandwidth here for the trivial, the banal, the boring, the vain, the boorish, the abusive, the automatic. It is the fittest meme that will inherit the earth. Make yours so, give us your best, as we all plunge back into the common dream…
Most elegant and spot on, wouldn’t you say?
If you want more good stuff, go on to Smoke, (if you haven’t already), Rom wrote “It’s Your Blog” and makes a very good point on what makes this whole blogging scene so much smarter and so much better.
UPDATE-3: Click here to download this post in PDF format.
Tags: blogging, gaza, Mar Roxas, Mindanao, new media, pornography, SECRETARY NASSER PANGANDAMAN, VALLEY GOLF AND COUNTRY CLUB
is your title a mum-ra reference?
Coy,
Your post bring to mind a recent question Cheche Lazaro asked DJB and me recently: are blogger-journalist or journalist-bloggers effectively helping vet the mainstream media?
I remembering saying that objective isn’t really to vet MSM or even the blogosphere itself of irresponsible reportage. In the end it’s the readers who decide who they will believe in. So there’s natural attrition.
I fact the libel suit filed last week against Bambee Dela Paz for ther blog post on the mauling incident should me welcomed by all bloggers rather than allow themselves to be intimidated.
HBowever the case develops, it will set down jurisprudence about whether our libel laws in their present antiquated form extend to the internet.
If Bambee is convicted I am almost sure Her lawyers will fight it all the way to the SC.
GabbyD,
is your title a mum-ra reference?
yes.
Ding,
yep and bloggers should be interested in that too. hope she gets a good defense.
Brillant entry, Cocoy. I agree we shouldn’t be wasting brain power on irrelevant stuff. I stay focused on my blogging goals and I will never go wrong there.
Readers will come and go because that’s how the world works. My blog is not my life. It is just one of the vehicles I use to make life a better place for me and others.
For those who know the hassles of being sued…what with the money and time involved…this comment is not welcomed.
Why would a blogger suddenly erase a libelous word if she is not afraid of beung sued?
Whether it is winnable or not, libel cases are always a drain in emotion, money and time.
Get real and ask the lawyers.
The Ca t, correct me if I am wrong, if you are referring to my edits, I placed back the original sentence in another entry and disclosed the edit.
Yes, I should have made that disclosure in the first place. My mistake.
let the mayor sue for libel and let’s see if it will change the people’s perception.
politicians are always subject to libelous materials. Politicians should not be immune from complains and expressions of people.
The mayor is suing an 18 year old and the mayor is 27? He must be out of his mind.
I think you are barking up a wrong tree. These are the trees, tree one; tree two.
By the way spare me from being plurked. I am not an alalay of anyone.
Nah, just sending a message perhaps.
@momblogger glad you’re ok.
please keep on doing what you do.
you’re still awesome in my book.
The Ca t, I will remember that. FYI, my plurk timeline is set to private, so you will have to ask your source to point it out to me because I can’t find it though.
Leytenian, Philippine law presumes every defamatory imputation to be malicious, even if true. Can you imagine if all the politicians file libel suit? Our court rooms will be jumpacked with cases.
Cocoy, Thanks. I am always okay.
Cheers to new media.
Coy,
This post of your is a keeper. Bravo dude,BRAVO
Plurk is a community of friends/and fans and enemies. It is not entirely a private thing if someone leaks a transcript of conversation.
So just be warned that there may be members of the plurk who are interconnected and are not privately set or are not really your followers.Betrayal? Maybe so.
Denial is pointless. Remember twitter?
To be safe, don’t turn it into a battle ground with invisible enemies.
[...] it. a reminder to think twice before jumping into the next debate between mainstream media and the new media that’s admittedly going through birth pains, no, maybe teething pains, pinoy [...]
The Ca t, I do not deny the twitter message in 2007 which was meant for my twitter friends. I am aware Plurk is not entirely private. For the record, I am not denying anything until I see the transcript…. because I don’t recall or may have forgotten.
The only cat I plurk about is my new kitty, Missy .
If you want to discuss this further, just email me at noemidado@gmail.com. I don’t want to clutter the comment sections. Thank you.
Copy-pasted from
MAYOR NASSER PANGANDAMAN JR. (DAR CHIEF’S SON) MAULED A FATHER & SON AT VALLEY GOLF AND COUNTRY CLUB
blogged by Noemi:
(numberings and emphasis on Noemi’s comments/edits mine)
Over at MV’s blog (an update was given) 2009-01-11 00:38:00
MV noted Noemi’s Multiply version of the “equally dysfunctional” line was already edited sans disclosure of editing or update.
—–
@Noemi
I don’t mind if you edited my comments (…it’s your blog) but why this kind of reaction when all the while I was sending you a heads-up on the editing lapse you’ve committed?
Were you ok then?
Btw, ANC viewers will be able to READ YOUR LIPS when you talk about full disclosure in blogging in order to maintain credibility and when you speak about the effect of jumping to conclusions in the New Media.
oops, full disclosure up to a certain extent…
****From The Moderator****
I thank everyone for such engaged and passionate comments, especially on this issue which we all have a stake in.
Blogging is indeed probably one of the greatest medium with which our own democracy has been put into our own hands, it is a tool, but with such things, we need to able to remain civil while always looking into the greater topic of discussion.
In this respect, let us try to look into the essence of Cocoy’s article, and refrain from ad hominem attacks that lead us away from the writers goal of his article. Cocoy did us a great service in this article, let us reciprocate by bringing our insights and not our own personal battles into the fray.
I appreciate the consideration
– Nick
Thanks, too, for having me here…and I apologize.
New Media working fine.
What better way to exemplify Cocoy’s article than this communication.
Hello Cocoy,
I just read your post, and I was hoping that it wouldn’t be too late to invite you to appear today at 6pm on ANC’s Media in Focus. Call time is at 5:30pm at Studio 6, Abs-cbn, and we would very much appreciate your insights regarding blogging, especially as it pertains to the De la Paz issue.
Please contact me through pat.evangelista@gmail.com or through Facebook, and I’ll be happy to call you directly if you can leave a contact. We would be glad to have you.
Cheers,
Patricia Evangelista
Executive Producer
Media in Focus, ANC
Patricia,
will email you.
cheers,
cocoy
[...] seen a flurry of thoughts on what blogging is all about and what New Media is all about. Least was my recent train of thought on the matter (”Ancient Spirits of Golf, Please Meet New Media̶… and perhaps— should we have a common defense or as reader ia pointed out in the comments [...]
QUOTE “That’s another power of New Media. It requires people to think and to discern.”
UNQUOTE
Some links for the readers to discern – before they launch an SEO campaign (which is now vast) – full of entirely unreasoned commentaries and deliberate exaggerations, incitements by false accusations of racism – you name it – it’s there.
Even an hour long video interview.
If at all possible – try to view this issue through my eyes – a mission to discover a truth – encountering a deliberatey created smokescreen.
Is that hospitable?
cyber bullying
Flag Day
Victims
Is this kind of massive deception to thwart the course of a search for truth – responsible blogging?
Or is this simply the wrong medium to search for truth of a sensitive nature?
Was I “Blogging A Dead Horse?”