Are you addicted to the blogosphere? This diary takes an affirmative view of the powerful attraction of the blog world, suggesting that the global growth of intensive blog participation is early evidence of the emergence of a collective human consciousness. Thus, "addiction" to the blogosphere may prove, ultimately, as damaging as other deep involvements in the collective life of the civilized mind, such as the study of history, philosophical inquiry, and political discourse.
The discussion considers the pejorative framework of addiction, reviews the empowering aspects of the blogosphere, and speculates on future evolution of blog-augmented consciousness and community.
What is addiction?
Addiction is a dirty word because is implies destructive, involuntary dependency. A drug addiction diverts time, energy, and money away from constructive pursuits, rendering the addict a prisoner of a shrinking space of self gratification. Certain patterns of Internet usage do fit the destructive addiction paradigm. Gambling, gaming, pornography, shopping, and other net-enabled extensions of real world addictive behaviors diminish people and may cause as much or more harm as pre-Internet manifestations of equivalent addictive behavior.
Are blogs addictive?
Are blogs fair targets for disparagement as addictive pursuits? Certainly active blog participation consumes a great deal of time and effort, and to observers of the committed blogger, blogging appears to distort the priorities and personality of the participant, pulling him out of the "real world," sometimes to the detriment of relations with friends and family.
But do blogs diminish us and damage our human potential? I believe the answer is a resounding NO. What attracts bloggers to sites like DKos is the power of participation in an intellectual collective that augments considerably the mind of each member.
What is blogging?
We are still coming to grips with the radical novelty of the Blogosphere. It is far more than the sum of its parts. I submit that a blogger in the "flow state" of exchanging blog knowledge experiences a heightened state of awareness that can be interpreted as early evidence of the emergence of a collective consciousness, as suggested by Teilhard de Chardin in "The Phenomenon of Man." In other words, the excitement and stimulus of blogging derives from the sensation of thinking with an amplified mind. An example of this is the ripple phenomenon of knowledge expansion that frequently occurs in a fruitful live-blogging thread. Someone will note a bit of information that doesn't fit the puzzle; the next post will add a link or a citation; a third post will shift the perspective to a more revealing line of thought; and successive posts may slide the puzzle piece right into the space it fits. For people with active, inquiring minds, this is thrilling stuff, the equivalent of turbocharging your brain - and it is powerfully attractive.
What is a collective mind?
Without stumbling into the cliches of bad science fiction, I think we can reach some fruitful conclusions on the characteristics of collective consciousness based on early experience of the Blogosphere. One salient phenomenon, is the state transition that we experience when we actively participate in a blog. First like a scientist readying instruments, or a workman laying out his tools, we ready our augmentive resources. On DKos, we choose a topic focus, then look for rich threads and high-value contributors. Next, we try to catch a knowledge wave, seeking a thread where we swiftly expand our insight into a topic of interest. Finally, we look for opportunities to contribute, driven by a bonding motivation for which we have no better term than "mojo."
When major events call out for interpretation, our first need is to determing how the blog "community" has processed the news. Think about that. We already value the collective mind of a blog community above our individual ability to assess an event. We have internalized the superiority of seeing the world throught the high-resolution optics of the Blogosphere, rather than peering through the small dark glass of our solitary perspective.
Elaborating a full theory the "blogstate" is beyond my limited knowledge of psychology and communications theory, but it is intuitively obvious to me that my brain functions differently operating alone than it does in "blog mode." The best analog I can offer is putting on the 3D glasses at an Imax film or switching the music reproduction from mono to stereo. When thinking and learning in a blog environment, everything is understood more rapidly and deeply. One last analogy: during training, some football players walk with weights on their shoes, so that when on the playing field, with weights removed, they feel tremendously fast on their feet. When we enter the blogosphere, we remove the weights of solitary cognition from our minds.
Where is the Blogosphere going?
It is hard to predict the evolutionary destination of the Blogosphere, but it is clear that it is heading there at a very rapid rate. The journey from nothing, to rudimentary newsletter blogs, to interactive blogs, to vibrant, fractal-structured community blogs like DKos has taken only 10 years. Another 10 years may see the eclipse of print and electronic media that took a century to build and the beginnings of deep social transformations.
There is simply no precedent for the emergence of global cognitive collectives linked at electronic speeds. The Blogosphere relates to the paper-based correspondence of learned societies like a jet plane relates to an ox cart. This excitement of participating in a headlong rush into uncharted territory in the evolution of civilization is not the least attraction of the "addictive" Blogosphere.
Blog addiction is fiction
In summary, addiction is an inappropriate pejorative for the powerful attraction of the Blogosphere for intellectually active people. The irresistible pull of the Blogosphere is the force of evolution drawing us out of solitary thought into collective cognition, and ultimately, collective consciousness. Few thoughtful people will turn away from the the captivating view the Blogosphere provides of our future.