The Disruptive Technology of New Media

A cat, along with a flask containing a poison, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation then the flask is shattered, releasing the poison which kills the cat. Quantum mechanics suggests that after a while the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not a mixture of alive and dead.-Schrödinger’s Cat

Is Blogging and New Media what you’d call, disruptive technology?

@dannyarao sent out this tweet: “Topic: Subjectivity as a cause of tension between bloggers and journalists. Then again, there are more pressing concerns to write about.” So, I asked myself: do we have more pressing concern, or isn’t understanding the nature of New Media, one such concern?

The Blogging Question

Blogging isn’t entirely politically inclined even with the rise of such blogs as The Huffington Post that talk for example of Bailed-Out Firms Use Tax Havens. Some of my favorite blogs aren’t politically inclined such as The Ayson Chronicles, Daring Fireball, Macrumours, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Engadget and Howard Lindzon. Who hasn’t heard of those blogs?

John Gruber’s Daring Fireball is an awesome read. take this bit of commentary:

“Something sure happened in the last nine days. The gist of Jobs’s January 5 PR was “I’m being treated but I’m not going anywhere.” The gist of his email today was “I’m going away for six months.” I somehow doubt that Goldman is correct that idle speculation from two industry executives who can no longer get Jobs to answer their phone calls or instant messages is it.”

and this one: Walt Mossber on Steve Job’s Heath and Apple

Voice of reason.

In recent days the local blogging scene and by extension, local mainstream media has 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 Media”) and perhaps— should we have a common defense or as reader ia pointed out in the comments section there are such things as insurance . Could these be a mechanism to respond against any libel complaint?

Carlos Conde wrote about his introspection with regard to both being blogger and journalist. On “The ‘Golf War’ and the Perils of Blogging“, which you should read (if you haven’t), a snippet of his “crisis of faith” goes:

Blogging was not invented for journalists and, as such, may not be an ideal medium for them. (Indeed, some even believe that blogging was invented precisely to get around the conventions of mainstream journalism.) It is clear to me now that journalism is one hat, blogging is another. And a journalist, in my view, cannot wear two hats — especially those that, because of their respective nature, simply don’t fit if worn at the same time.

I would be lying if I said that this self-examination was not prompted by the so-called “golf war” and how it played out, i.e. that the Valley Golf and Country Club management has practically exonerated the Pangandamans, who have been vilified on the Internet left and right.

An ironic thing happened a few months back. Steve Jobs was reported by CNN via iReport to have had a Heart Attack. The odd thing, Mac rumor sites were the more prudent ones to have held off reporting it.

In “Why We Blog“, Abe had these thoughts to share:

Blogging is to no-holds-barred street-fighting as traditional literary form to the sweet science of prizefighting. There ought to be no enmity between these two forms of thought expressions, as Sullivan has correctly pointed out; one complements the other. I agree.

Interesting analogy.

Oh, with regard to that Media Focus episode, you should go check out @momblogger who wrote about Media in Focus on De la Paz & Blogging, a recap of the episode in which she together with “Carlos Conde, Danilo Araña Arao (Assistant Professor of Journalism in UP), Atty JJ Disini, Councilor JC de los Reyes” appeared as guests. Her page has video of the episode via @brinknotes.

The question of credibility and accountability was address in that episode of media focus. Also apt, was DJB’s recent Kudos to the Mom Blogger:

Where traditional journalists rely on the wisdom of editors, we Bloggers rely on the wisdom of the crowd to restrain our passions, to check our facts and test our assertions. We are each other’s whetstones and limit switches, critics and devil’s advocates. We do things this way because it is much cheaper and more effective than setting up uneconomical, unecological multibillion peso newspaper empires, television and radio networks, whose principal goals are largely commercial and only partly journalistic.

With all this media focus, I suppose, Rom over at Smoke’s geeky funny and cliff-notety “a brief history of media“, is right on time. This part, I particularly found to be geeky funny:

Imagine a landlord, frustrated at the dying of his crops – not knowing why. He would turn to those who knew and those who knew, in helping the landlord, gained a kind of power over him. But that power too was fragile and easily wrested away. Then as now, geeks hardly stood a chance against jocks.

But jocks are a cowardly and superstitious lot – as Bruce Wayne intuited. And so, if the geeks could not cow them by might and main, they resorted to superstition and religion. Fear of damnation led kings to brave winter storms just to ask for a priests forgiveness. Eventually, intellectual power became the prized possession of the God-merchants. But don’t gt me wrong. This was, by no means a novelty. Stretching back into pre-history, god-merchants had always exercised this monopoly on esoteric knowledge. The emergence of powerful religion simply modernized the shamanistic tyranny of information.

Speaking of Bruce Wayne, it isn’t just politics that seem to fill blog controversy these days. That fictional billionaire playboy and industrialist, is hot topic ever since Bat-scribe Grant Morrison penned Batman: R.I.P., and yes it means exactly that.

Sort of.

Of course the “convoluted” story of how Bruce Wayne died has been a hot topic on the internet. And Grant Morrison has been hail both genius and insane. Oh, I lean towards the genius crowd, if that was your question.

The sad part though, as newsarama points out, no one seem to have noticed.

In Dick Grayson, the first Robin’s book, “Nightwing”, the villain known as Ra’s Al Ghul as penned by Peter Tomasi said, “A Hero of Batman’s caliber should not have perished in the shadows. A hero like Batman should have been killed in the bright light of day for all the world to see.”

Who knows how Battle for the Cowl will end?

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