I was thinking about why I’m blogging, about why anyone blogs. [and making it difficult for myself by pumping out The Chemical Brothers new album “Push the Button” at the same time.] Of course there are a number of obvious answers. Fred Wilson (A VC) pretty much sums up the basics. But what interests me is the blogspace itself and what it represents. C S Peirce in “The Fixation of Belief” argued that there are three (it’s always 3 with Peirce!) characteristics which should be present as a basis for belief.
1 It must control our thinking, our thinking must not control it2 It must be publicly observable
3 It must lead to a common opinion
Something is real if its nature is independent of how I happen to think it to be. The truth, such as it is, is to be found through a COMMUNITY (Peirce himself capitalises the word) of observers. Ultimately, truth, he imagines, is to be found in an unbounded community in the whole of time. Peirce’s system is self-corrective, subsequent investigators correct the idiosyncrasies of those who have gone before, but knowledge is never absolute. We must accept fallibility, it’s the best we have.
“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase in knowledge. And so those two series of cognitions - the real and the unreal - consist of those which, at a time sufficiently future, the community will always continue to reaffirm; and of those which, under the same conditions, will ever be denied. ” - CS Peirce (Questions Concerning Certain Faculties)I give you the Blogosphere - a community without definite limits and capable of a definite increase in knowledge.
I think this is important because it goes some way to explain why it upsets so many, and is going to upset so many more. A friend once told me that he couldn’t believe that the internet was allowed to happen, since it gave consumers all the power. What he hadn’t understood is that THEY, the corporations in this case, didn’t get it. (We’ll ignore the fact that most consumers don’t get it either) Most still don’t, though there are the beginnings of rumblings. Anyone who’s read Cluetrain, or my favourite blog gapingvoid will know what I’m on about.
