Of course it’s no coincidence that the 9/11 jihadists and many on the Left (and not only the highly radicalized Left) essentially say much the same thing under this topos of anti-Western, anti-capitalist demonologies. To state the obvious, WTC ’93, then 9/11: both times targeting the same symbol of Western/U.S. financial strength and success. I’m all in favor of thoughtfully trenchant critiques of the excesses that formations of capital can, in the wrong hands, result in. But trenchant, illuminating critiques are of a different type and kind, a different quality and category altogether, than demonologies shared by jihadists and the Left.

The real answer comes down to the postings on the “better” sites. Most of the “better” sites annotate with hype-links ad nauseam, so that the readers has the opportunity to view the underlining arguments, thesises and hypothesises. This is something that the “dead tree” newspapers, television and radio can’t compete with except on the same terms on virtually the same media, the Internet.

Obviously, when you sift out the “better” and “fair” weblogs, you are left with the Internet chat rooms: sleazy and unreliable. This is the blight of the Internet. Just as most newspapers turn a blind eye to the tabloids with their stories of space aliens and breast implants, the weblogs try to ignore this blight.

Everyone is always interested in “public discourse” and weblogs are the current manifestation. Fear of the unknown is nothing new; especially when one’s livelihood is involved.

Just ask Dan.

What you write, Catherine, is Conventional Wisdom, but I’m not sure it’s right. From my perspective, many “liberals” are mega-capitalists in reality from Robert Rubin to Rob Reiner (to be alliterative). The ‘Wall Street is evil’ business is no more than a pose. And that’s a problem, because these people are allowing their fantasy selves to dictate their reality. More about that in my forthcoming book.

To the extent that the blogospheres function as hive minds, it makes sense to me that the MSM is going to take awhile to figure them out.

I don’t think I’m misstating when I say that most liberals continue to see the “market” as a dangerous & often bad thing (just today a friend here in town told me ‘Wall Street is evil.’ I’m quoting.)

The notion of the hive mind is a simple translation of the notion of the market.

I’m sure “cultural ratcheting” and “hive mind working memory” relate to complexity theory somehow . . . but I can’t put my finger on it.

The words “emergent property” spring to mind, however.

Maybe after the election we can start a civil discussion about how to repair the godawful public education system

I have some fabulous quotes for you from THE PUBLIC INTEREST’S new article on NCLB!

Will get them typed up SOON——

Complexity theory is one way to think about the blog phenomenon . . .

Another, for me, is more along Slarrow’s lines, I think.

I’m trying to figure out if I can make this succinct.

Hmm.

I think it’s possible the blog phenomenon will speed up cultural evolution and/or make people smarter.

I’ll start with intelligence.

What we think of as intelligence is directly & causally related to working memory.

Working memory is essentially consciousness: it’s what we’re holding in mind right this minute.

If you’re dialing a phone number, working memory holds the 7 digits in consciousness.

If you’re reading this post, working memory holds the beginning of the post in consciousness; working memory also holds the beginning of each sentence in consciousness so when you get to the period at the end the whole thing makes sense. (Let’s hope.)

The more “stuff” you can hold in working memory at one time, the smarter you are. That’s fairly well documented.

Working memory is related to the blogosphere because I think the internet may act as a kind of “hive mind,” like the “terror market” DARPA wanted to set up.

Here’s a terrific passage from one of the many articles on Rathergate:

In the same way the market sifts and analyzes information stocks far better than any individual investor or institution ever could, the blogosphere weeds out the chaff and develops and hones analysis and facts at, well, Internet speed.

“It’s sort of an open-source intelligence gathering network that draws on the expertise from around the world,” said LGF’s Johnson.

If you think of the blogosphere–or more accurately, blogospheres–as a hive mind, one of its most remarkable features is a whopping big working memory.

That makes the hive mind smart, which I’m guessing translates to making the individual minds subsumed by the hive mind smarter, too.

Next: cultural evolution.

Cultural evolution depends on the ratchet effect, meaning that cultures hold a certain level of development in place while preparing to make another “turn” forward.

In other words: each generation builds on the works of the previous generation. No generation has to reinvent the wheel.

Education is critical to cultural evolution, because education allows each new generation to master the knowledge built up by the preceding thousands of generations.

Cultural evolution probably also depends on mass education, because the more people you have to remember, use, and teach each generation’s accumulated store of knowledge, the better. If too many people fall out of the system, you have knowledge “slippage.”

Lost knowledge has to be reinvented, and that takes time. The culture isn’t evolving while lost knowledge is being replaced.

An aside: women seem to be particularly keen on transmitting one generation’s knowledge to the next. Elementary school teachers are almost universally women, and I don’t think that’s just because the pay is lower than what you’d earn as a lawyer & you get the summers off (I could be wrong . . . )

Women just naturally think children exist to learn stuff.

Which they do.

It has crossed my mind that one explanation for why Arab cultures seem to have stopped evolving is that they’ve taken their women out of the cultural ratcheting business.

If you exclude one-half of your population from the ratchet activities of learning and teaching, and if that one-half happens to be the one-half most interested in actually doing the teaching—–what’s going to be the effect?

I’m guessing that if you ran that one on a computer simulation you’d get Saudi Arabia.

I’m also guessing that the various blogospheres, with their infinite collective memories (in the form of Google & Lexis-Nexis if nothing else) may fantastically lower the amount of knowledge “slippage” between generations.

The blogosphere may be a fantastically powerful ratchet.

Thanks for the kind words. Coming from Roger’s Place’s Resident Force of Nature they are a high compliment indeed.

Maybe after the election we can start a civil discussion about how to repair the godawful public education system. I know that topic doesn’t interest you much

HEY, WILL SOMEONE SHOW NPR HOW TO USE OPENSECRETS.ORG?

It is this knucklehead’s fervent hope that the blogosphere ultimately resurrects civil discussion as a respected activity and causes people to become personally involved and invested in public issues. As it is now (or was until recently), we were all stuck listening to what the MSM told us, filtered that through our experience and expertise, and went off to vote. That isn’t enough. We need to freakin’ listen to the expertise and thought process of other people when it comes to important issues. That doesn’t mean we need to embrace their ideas or claims, but we have to acknowledge, offer such respect as they deserve, and attempt to persuade one another

I say we all tattoo this on our foreheads right away.

I don’t know that I’m optimistic the internet will provide this . . . though OTOH, Roger’s blog actually does provide a forum for civil discussion, agreement, & disagreement, so don’t listen to me.

Blogs are not a medium for presenting information, they are a medium for building information.

I love that.

Of course, blogs are also a medium for ranting—what’s the Leon Whisteltier (sp?) line? The “deranging influence of blogs”?

Something like that.

Certainly since 9-11 I’ve felt the need for an informed conversation about what the hell is going on out there. Blogs are the closest I’ve come to having that.

When I say “informed” I mean informed: as an agent of mine once said, ‘Opinions are like a*******. Everyone has them, and all of them smell.’

I’m sorry.

That’s what she said.

I certainly appreciate good logic, so I’m interested in well-reasoned opinion. I also appreciate the “church-like” nature of blogs: the daily reinforcement of one’s beliefs and values. (That’s the good side of an ‘echo chamber.’)

But I’m also looking for well-reasoned opinion based in “open source” knowledge (articles & books other commenters have read that I haven’t) or in genuine expertise. I find that all the time around here.