Blogging a dead horse

I'm here in Orlando this week for Lotusphere 2006, the premier technical conference for all things Lotus. There have been loads of announcements about new products and new partnerships but I don't propose to write about them here. That is partly because others in the community are far better at doing it than me, for example Ed Brill, Rocky Oliver, IBM,
Computer World, The Register and Information Week. There is no point me repeating that stuff here.

However, I did attend two sessions today on the topic of writing a Web Log, how they can create virtual communities and what the cultural and sociological implications are. The discursions were wide ranging and interesting covering topics as diverse as gender balance between web loggers, the difference geography can make to acceptance and the futility of trying to hide your true identity on the web. What I found most interesting was a discussion on whether the ability of anyone to create a Web Log will result in the democratisation of our society or will it result in the Web being saturated by everyone prattling on about their own opinions leaving no one left to actually do anything. I have heard this argument about many things in the past. If everyone becomes a critic who is left to create the art? If everyone owns a hotel where will the guests come from? But that doesn't happen does it! Society has a way of organising itself and there is no reason to think that won't happen on the web. People will read interesting web logs and ignore the rest. Which might not bode well for this one :-)