HW 35: Dear Erica's Blog Readers: This is Not Goodbye...

Dear Readers:

What I have learned from maintaining my blog from the past 13 weeks is that it isn’t an easy task. There are so many people who write on their blogs everyday and keep them updated and they’re not even doing it for a class or getting paid. They are doing it because they have a cause or they want their voice to be heard. What I hope someone could get out of my blog is an understanding of what blogs are capable of for a participatory democracy. We all have to be informed citizens and the best way to do that is by keeping yourself up to date with the latest news and what people are talking about. The proudest work for me on my blog is, HW 18: The Diet and Fashion Industry are to Blame for Your Anorexia. I love this post because I talk about something that I’m very passionate about and it shows in my arguments. I think after this class is over I will maintain my blog but it will obviously have a different tone because I will be writing for myself and not be writing assignments. I have enjoyed learning how to use this new technology and it will, I’m sure impact my life in a positive way.

HW 34: What's Important to Riverbend

The role of gold in family savings in Iraq has changed since the beginning of the war. According to Riverbend who wrote Baghdad Burning, “Gold is a part of our culture and the role it plays in “family savings” has increased since 1990 when the Iraqi Dinar (which was $3) began fluctuating crazily. People began converting their money to gold-earrings, bracelets, necklaces-because the value of gold didn’t change. People pulled their money out of banks before the war, and bought gold instead” (100). What Riverbend is trying to stress is that gold is an important part of Iraq’s culture and now in these times of stress trying to hold onto their wealth in gold has been extremely hard.
Date palms are important to Iraqi people because they use them for so many different things. For example Riverbend points out, “Dates are also used to produce “dibiss,” a dark, smooth, date syrup. This dibiss is eaten in some areas with rice, and in others it is used as syrup with bread and butter. Often it is used as a main source of sugar in Iraqi sweets” (104). They are not only useful in material ways but the Iraqi people have taken to them as something they can be proud of and they stand for what the Iraqis believe in.

HW 32: Responding to Riverbend

Akila Al-Hashimi is a member of the Iraq counsel. In Riverbend's book Baghdad Burning Riverbend talks about her after there was an attempt on her life. She had been leaving to go to work with her bodyguards, her brothers, and two pickup trucks full of armed men cute her off and wounded her in the foot, shoulder, and the stomache. She was taken away in an American ambulance to somewhere no one knows where. Riverbend talks about how depressing it is because she felt like Al-Hashimi was one of the only decent members on the counsil. It also made her upset because it showed how no female is safe no matter how high up she is. She feels as though some were bitter towards her because she didn't wear a hijab and she was female (Riverbend 75-76).

HW 31: Responding to Riverbend

I would like to learn more about Ba'athists. In reading Baghdad Burning by Riverbend I came across this term on page 45 and it made me curious. What I have found out is that the Ba'athists are insurgents led by the former Saddam Hussein. What that has to do with the book is Riverbend is talking about an interview with Al-Jazeera and how he says in the interview that he feels the extremists, loyalists, terrorists, Ba'athists, and people from neighboring countries were responsible for the assasination of Al-Hakim. That made me question what Ba'athists were because I have heard the term before but didn't know what it meant. I found an article talking about Ba'athists but there isn't anything on wikipedia about them. the link is http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/32911/. It is interesting that Scott Ridder of Alternet talks about what the Ba'athists have done in Iraq for example, "The chaos and anarchy that dominates the Iraqi domestic scene today is a direct result of the Canal Hotel bombing, and represents the underlying strategy of the Ba'athist insurgents, which is to create the conditions within Iraq where the Iraqi people have lost faith in the American occupier and their proxy Iraqi government to bring about peace and stability" (1).

Ridder, Scott. Alternet. 2006. 6 Mar.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/32911/

Riverbend. Baghdad Burning. New York, NY: First Feminist Press, 2005

HW 30: Citizenship Symposium

The first session I went to was, Iraq Body Count: Real People, Fake Numbers by Stephen J. Clark, Ph.D. He is an associate professor of psychology at Keene State College. The talk was about statistics and numbers and questioning what we read, see, and hear. He went through a few recent statistics going around in the media and pointed out certain questions we should ask about all statistics. For example, “Who created this statistic, why was this statistic created, and how was this statistic created?” What this meant for me was when I look at a given number I should always ask myself what their agenda is, and what is at stake. One of his points was made by a recent comment made by a politician supporting the war and he said that Iraq was nor more dangerous than our nations capital Washington D.C. What we realized after looking at the numbers more closely was that he was using the total deaths in a month in Iraq and the total numbers of deaths in a year from D.C. This only confirmed his theory that we all need to be active participants in our country and in doing so it is so important to be properly informed and to question everything.

The other session I went to was, Citizenship and Responsibility by Tom Lantos, U.S. representative and Holocaust survivor. He is the only Holocaust to ever serve in Congress and the only one who ever will. He came to America after WW II from Hungary with literally nothing. His theme for the talk was based on a quote from the new president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, “America did not teach men the idea of freedom she taught them how to practice it”. He spoke about freedom and democracy being a goal that we are continually trying to close the, “hypocrisy gap” on. In other words we have ideals and in the two or three hundred years of practicing these in America we are slowly getting there. His examples of our achievements included all the things we have done for Germany, France, and other foreign countries. We as a country are more attuned than any other country to accepting global responsibility and as such we have a responsibility. We also as citizens have a responsibility to deal with the issues in our country and while it might be tempting to hide from that, especially in these critical times we must be informed and active citizens of our country.

HW 28: "An Open Letter to Riverbend"

Dear Riverbend,

After reading the first few of your blogs my heart broke for you, your family, and your country. I can only imagine what it must be like to have so much ripped away from you all at once. Not only do you have to worry about your life being taken, but quite literally it already has. Everything that you knew, your job, your liberty, your equality has been taken away so how much of a life does that really leave you? It is so easy for me and other Americans to sit back in the comfort of our same every day lives and to claim that we feel for you, but we really have no idea. I know there are some people in America who have had parallel experiences with everything being ripped away but we have always had the comfort of knowing that our country was seemingly indestructible, until recently that is. I can only offer you the comfort of knowing that your voice is being heard, even as far away as New England, we hear you.

HW 27: Annotated Bib for Baghdad Burning

Riverbend. Baghdad Burning. New York, NY. The Feminist Press, 2005

This is a book comprised of blogs written by a young woman living in Iraq. She writes as frequently as she can and has a very smart and understanding view on the politics surrounding her. The book goes into her life and she takes you with her throughout her experiences with this war going on between America and Iraq. This book fits into our course perfectly because she is a woman who is blogging to make a difference not just for herself but for others as well. It is also very eye-opening to the politics of our country and how other people see our country. I’m sure there will be some in our course reading this who will take offense, but I will not be one of them. What I hope to get out of it is a clearer understanding of a first hand account of this war. It puts a face to a faceless bunch of people who are being victimized by this war.

HW 25: Overview of the Overview

The forward to, Baghdad Burning by Riverbend is written by Ahdaf Soueif. The introduction is written by James Ridgeway. The forward is a brief overview if you will on the book. She talks about what is important in the book, like saying that it has a lot of politics in it but that it is interesting because it isn’t ideological but different because it is a first hand account of someone experiencing those politics. She talks about what this book should do for people which is basically to open their eyes to this war which isn’t happening to all of us like it is to Riverbend. The introduction goes more into depth about specifics to the book like who Riverbed is and where she lives. It also gives short narratives on the Gulf War and the 2003 war. It also gives Iraq’s history very briefly. My own views on this war are probably very similar to Riverbend’s. Soueif’s and Ridgeway’s. I am very much against it and the Bush administration in general. We have witnessed extreme and horrible atrocities in the past six or seven years and I feel like all of it is for the wrong reasons. Of course what Soueif and Ridgeway have laid out is a very different account than what most people learn in their history classes, but I have been fortunate enough to be in college for most of this and have seen and heard the real story.

HW 23: Chasms of Deep Worry

With Apologies to Virginia Woolf:
What is it about fiction and women that makes it oh so easy to disregard the work of them? I have been pondering that question as of late and have stumbled upon no good or easy answers. This blog post about different authors and texts for boys and girls it makes one think of seeking truth. Truth in all matters of genders, here or now. Boy children get to read about adventure and politics and mere girl child of love and house. What of it that we can’t read the same text, this question is one that I seek answer to. One might think this is a pattern of yesteryear, but think again for it is now on the blog, Collected Voices, http://collectedvoices.blogspot.com/2007/10/not-for-girls-how-teachers-are-limiting.html that you may find this troubling piece that so accurately depicts the chasm between the sexes. It is also troubling to think that women have been forced into little spaces where they may only write of love or stories with no wit or humor. “Happily my thoughts were now given another turn” (Woolf 77).

HW 22: Mars...Patriarchy is alive and well here

In Virginia Woolf’s novel, A Room of One’s Own she talks about how if someone from another planet were to pick up one of our newspapers it would be plain to see that our world is ruled by patriarchy (Woolf 33). She gives examples about how everything is owned by men and as a result everything but the cloudy forecast is controlled by them. She makes reference to this power as their way of holding on to the control and influence and illustrates how when they write about women’s inferiority they seem angry, and that anger must have to do with trying to keep their power away from women. When I checked out the Boston Globe for the same results I also found that even in this day and age someone could plainly see that men still have the majority of the power, money, and influence. Most of the stories were about men and their political power or their money making ways, and when there were stories about women it was about a teacher, and everyone knows teachers don’t have any money…

HW 21: Dear Little Cousin

Dear little cousin,
My understanding of Virginia Woolf’s novel, or at least the first chapter in, A Room of One’s Own is that she is talking about the inequities of women writers to men. She gives some examples like when she is sitting by the river gathering her thoughts to write, but she gets interrupted by a man who goes to that college and she is a woman and isn’t supposed to be there. My thought is that she feels like she is excluded from certain things because she is a woman and isn’t allowed access to what the men have access to. Another thing she talks about is literally having a room of her own to be able to write in. She talks about how you have to be able to afford that room and a lot of times women can’t afford that room like men can. I think this piece is important to people because she was ahead of her times in talking about sexism and about the things she couldn’t do because she was a woman.

HW 19: How Important are Blogs to the Media?

My chosen section of the piece, Web of Influence written by Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell in Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture by David Kline and Dan Burstein is about how the blogosphere influences what the media covers. They address how if the blogosphere wasn’t around the media often wouldn’t cover the stories that people are actually interested in. Consider for example in 2004 a writer for WomensWallStreet.com posted online her account of suspicious activity by Syrian passengers on board an airplane she was on and her absolute terror in not knowing whether or not they were a risk to her safety. Even more important 2 million people read her blog and soon thereafter media outlets like NPR, MSNBC, Time, and the New York Times picked up the story and prompted a national debate about the racial profiling that airlines were doing post 9/11. In short whether they like it or not personal opinion and commentary are important things for the media to consider and blogs will have a compelling effect on what the media covers.
http://Womenswallstreet.com

HW 18: The Diet and Fashion Industry are to Blame for Your Anorexia

I chose Understanding Anorexia: A Thin Excuse by Naomi Hooke in the Blog, Feministing as my least favorite Blog of the week. This post was basically saying that you can’t blame the fashion industry and their anorexic models for the prevalence of anorexia. She states, “To believe that the fashion industry causes eating disorders is to completely misunderstand this most complex of illnesses” and then later, “The vast majority of eating disorder patients have numerous other difficulties, including low self-esteem or confidence, lack of self-care, and social difficulties” (Hooke 1). Basically what she is arguing here is that the media and fashion industry have nothing to do with her disease. Although it is commonly understood here in America and according to Terry Poulton who wrote No Fat Chicks, “Nearly 30,000 women stated, in the largest such survey to date, that they’d rather lose weight than achieve any other goal-despite the fact that only 25 percent were overweight and another 25 percent were actually underweight” (Poulton 13). In a country where the diet industry is raking in $50 billion plus a year trying to make us all, thin or not, diet you just can’t ignore their influence. In fact Poulton points out, “Most Americans alive today have no memory of a time when thinness was not a national obsession, and thus regard the artificial as normal (Poulton 13). Hooke is saying that her disease can be blamed on her low self-esteem and confidence, but what she is forgetting to do is to look at why her self-esteem is so low. It is the job of the media and the diet industry together to make her feel bad about herself so that she will spend all of her time and money at trying for an unattainable goal.
www.feministing.com

HW 17b: Where Do You Go For Political Advice?

I would definitely use Daily Kos as opposed to Wonkette for helping me decide who to vote for in the upcoming election. The Wonkette site is more tongue in cheek, sarcastic stuff and Daily Kos is more serious and scholarly, easier to trust. Wonkette is more about gossip and who is screwing who than about the candidates in the upcoming election. Ana Marie Cox evens says it in an interview in a book by Dan Burstein and David Kline called, Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture, “Wonkette is me after too many margaritas” (Cox 57). She doesn’t think the quality of blog writing is very good and argues that it is a creative output and that most often that is just not any good either. Daily Kos on the other hand takes themselves very seriously and they work to mobilize the politically active so that they can use their influence to win the upcoming election. I think the Wonkette is great for a laugh and some interesting tidbits, but when you want to get serious about the election I would head to Daily Kos.

HW 17: Issues such as these need all the attention they can get!

I chose Broadsheet to look for my favorite post of the week and I found a post called, Planned Parenthood Will See You Now written by Lynn Harris. I really enjoyed this post because in a world where the mainstream media is being tightly controlled this type of article is just what we need. It highlights the problems women are facing getting affordable healthcare, let alone being able to walk into a clinic without getting harassed. Planned Parenthood’s president Cecile Richards explains that, “We are concerned that the struggles the Aurora center faced in opening may be reflective of a growing battle against politics trumping health care, and increased barriers to reproductive health care access” (qtd. in Harris). In making this comment Richards calls attention to the increasing politicizing of healthcare and how detrimental that is to Americans who really need medical attention. It is so important that these types of issues get the attention they deserve so kudos to Broadsheet!
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/10/03/aurora_clinic_opens/index.html

HW 16: Broadsheet Follows the Rules

I looked into the Broadsheet blog and tried to see if they were following Robert Scoble’s Corporate Weblog Manifesto. It’s a little hard to say if they are following the principles because it is not a blog about a product or company, it’s a blog about news and politics, community, opinion etc. I think perhaps there needs to be a different set of principles for blogs that aren’t about businesses. I think there are a few that coincide like using a human voice, I think on the Broadsheet blog they do that very well they don’t try to sound like a newspaper or magazine, they use their real voice which does help speed up the process I’m sure. Also they have links to their “competitors” namely other blogs similar to theirs. They have the title as “Blogs We Read” which is a nice touch because it gives the blogs importance. It’s a way of being nice and saying nice things about them. Again it’s hard to say what standards they aren’t following because they aren’t really promoting their business, they are a community.

HW 14: What Newspaper Are You Reading?

In reading Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business and Culture I came across an interview with Nick Denton called, Take an Obsession and Feed It. Although it is true that he argues, “I don’t think anyone is going to replace, anytime soon, the role of The New York Times in providing, for example, reporting from Baghdad” (Denton 156) he is saying that blogs provide a different service. As an illustration he says that blogs will have an edge in helping people decide what they want to read and what they think is important nationally. As a result people won’t be as loyal to one newspaper, they can mix and match stories according to what’s important to them. For instance what people are doing with TiVo, they are creating their own TV channel in essence and that is what we can do with blog reporting.

HW 13: Why Blogs Matter

Some people are under the impression that blogs have only to do with media, politics or personal issues. The argument made by Stephen Baker and Heather Green in an article called, Blogs Will Change Your Business in the book, Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture written by David Kline and Dan Burstein says, “if anyone thought blogs had only to do with media or politics or personal issues, they were missing one of the biggest elephants in the room: big business” (Baker, Green 221). While I understand that blogs will be very important to big business in terms of advertising and public image, at the same time the effect that they have had and will have on politics, social and personal ideas is going to be more profound. For example the short lived presidential campaign of Howard Dean proved that, “political bloggers can mobilize and unite large groups of citizens in ways that make insurgent candidates more viable” (Kline 14). The fact that blogs can have such an effect on something so important as who the next president is, and whether or not someone dies, (in the case of Ayelet Waldman whose blog readers alerted family of a suicide threat posted on her blog) is more important in the long run than big business making even more money.

HW 11: Can Bloggers Change the International Political Scene?

I chose to review a blog called The Kenyan Pundit, started by a Harvard law student named Ory Okollah who is from Kenya. The first thing you notice is the somewhat blurry aerial picture of what appears to be a street in Kenya. There are many links on the side to other relevant blogs, including some sarcastic ones like, “People Magazine is so 2004” with links to their stories underneath. It seems to me that only Ory Okolloh blogs on it and others leave their comments. There is a column that links all of the different categories she writes about some of which are titled, Africa, Africa and Blogs, American Politics, and Development and Aid. The style of writing varies with the categories, if she is writing under her Baby KP category she is pretty informal but with the political blogs she is more formal.
In reading an interview titled, Making Global Voices Heard with Rebecca MacKinnon in David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture MacKinnon reports, “Basically she [Okolloh] has become a hub figure who has spawned the growth of the Kenyan blogosphere” (MacKinnon 330). What MacKinnon is saying is that by having such a blog in existence it is linking other such bloggers and making them all be a part of the political scene. I agree with MacKinnon’s assessment of the blog, it really does have all the aspects needed to create discussion and change. Although I grant that some might say that these blogs are still in their very early days and can’t make such a significant change so easily, I still maintain that just the existence of such blogs opens the doors for open communication and that is the very foundation of democracy.

HW 9: Who Are You Blogging For?

In reading David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business and Culture I came across an interview with Ayelet Waldman called, A Weblog Saved My Life Last Night. Waldman reminds us that in this frenzy to connect with people of like minds through blogging, there are hidden risks. As a novelist she insisted that, “writing so openly about her personal life was draining both her and her husband of story ideas. Plus it was taking up too much spare time, usually two or three hours a day” (Waldman 308). Waldman’s point is that while blogging felt right for her in the moment, upon further reflection she realized it wasn’t doing her life that much good. I’m of two minds about Waldman’s claim. On the one hand, I agree that blogging can bring unforeseen risks. On the other hand, I’m not sure that blogging can be seen as the whole reason her work was suffering. I think that blogging to reach out to people and connect is a wonderful thing, and her claiming that it was somehow responsible for her own writing going downhill seems to me like she is using blogging as a scapegoat. Perhaps there needs to be a balance between what you write about and why you’re going online. Is it to write and be heard, or is it to connect and make friends?

HW 7: Are You There For Your Kids?

I think that, just like everything else, kids need to do things in moderation. While I don’t think it’s necessary to monitor everything that kids write online, I do think it’s a good idea for parents and guardians to know what their kids are up to online. There are many dangers that kids can unknowingly get into, and they don’t have the capacity to protect their selves from it, that’s their parent’s job. If parents could keep an open dialog with their kids about what they are doing online and the names of the sites they use etc., that would alleviate some of the fear of unchecked online consumption. Another idea is to have the computer in the family room, that way kids know they can be looked in on at any time by parents. In a piece called My So-Called Blog that Emily Nussbaum wrote for Dan Burstein and David Kline’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture she complicates matters further by asserting that, “this new technology has provided a million ways to stay in touch, it has also acted as both an amplifier and a distortion device for human intimacy” (Nussbaum 351). In other words Nussbaum is saying that now kids are spending so much time online and staying in touch with their friends, that they are losing out on the real intimacy of face to face conversation and relationships. They are putting themselves out there per say with their online confessionals and some would say giving in to being judged, but isn’t that what we all do in order to have an intimate relationship with someone? This goes back to having the parents there to act as a sounding board for these kids, so that they have someone to explain to them the complexities of relationships and life in general. On the computer or not, my point is that parents need to be there for their kids to help them sort out the hardships of life.

HW 6: Interest Statement

My interest in social computing lies within blogs (web logs), social networking services, and wikis. My interest in blogs has only recently been ignited by this class. I’m fascinated with the idea of effecting social change within something that most people have regular access to. Social networking services are interesting in the way that they can either align people and you can make friends, or it can be used in a negative way by cyber bullying. Wikis, or wikipedia is an intriguing idea because yet again it is affected by regular people who can edit and change things that would normally be entirely out of their hands.
The marginalized groups that concern me right now are women, people of color, and the working-class and poor. I’ve always been involved with ways of empowering oppressed groups and these three have been my main focus, probably because they are the closest to me in terms of either being directly affected or indirectly through friends and relatives. This is my main focus in and out of this class, as I want to work in a field that empowers the oppressed.
Of course I’m going to look at the US but I’m also interested in Europe and developing countries. In Europe I’d like to look at how close in relation they are with us on these topics and if they have some ways of doing things that may be better. Also I’m interested in whether social computing can empower people in developing countries.

HW 5b: Whose Voice Matters Most?

In, I Blog, Therefore I Am a piece in David Kline’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture Kline urges the readers to see the effect of the accessibility of blogs to everyone, not just the typical elite, educated scholars. Kline emphasizes this with saying that we have already witnessed this dramatic shift in the way that political bloggers have played such a high profile role in bringing about change in the political arena. He also argues that it is affecting the cultural and arts arena.
In my view, however the traditional elite’s opinion will always hold sway over any others. It doesn’t matter that the ordinary now has a voice as well, the elites opinion will still be respected more that the non-elites. I think it’s a great thing that the ordinary person now has the access to voice their own opinion in matters where before their opinion didn’t count. Just because their voices are now being heard doesn’t mean that the elite’s voice will not. In fact all one has to do is make sure that they know whose opinion they are hearing, and make their judgments based on that.

HW 4: What Are Your Clothes Promising You?

In response to reading “The Voice of the Customer,” in David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture I noticed a pair of Gap jeans laying a cross a chair in my room. I got to wondering what sort of promises the Gap company has made to me, the consumer. It must have made an impression because I shop there a lot. I think the idea originally with the Gap was nice, trendy, up to date clothing at a reasonable price maybe intended for the upper lower class and middle class, the upper class could perhaps get away with buying their basic necessities there like white t-shirts or socks. It was an affordable way to wear a “name brand”. Now it’s a little different, they are trying to up their image by getting the likes of John Mayer and Sarah Jessica Parker to model for them and in doing so have cut out some of us upper lower class and lower middle class folks from being able to afford them. I went to their web site and here’s what I observed. Everything was very classic, grays, whites, and black lettering with clean lines. Most of the models were white they were all extremely thin and tall and they all gave me the impression of not being wealthy per say but definitely not broke. A quote I saw, “Our design collection is relevant in many different contexts, yet always true to the Gap Brand Essence” made me think they are trying to target scholarly people, those who have an education. So basically what they are promising is that they will keep up with the trends but you will always be able to find clean and classy lines there, not to mention other people just like you will all be wearing the exact same thing.

www.gap.com

HW 3: Who Critiques Who?

In discussions of Blog How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture by, David Kline and Dan Burstein one controversial issue has been blogs and their effect on media and politics. On the one hand some people say that nobody reads blogs and therefore they have no effect. On the other hand Kline and Burstein among others argue that bloggers are transforming the political arena and are giving everyone a voice. In my opinion it used to be the media’s job to critique society, especially politics and the government. They haven’t been able to do their job successfully for a long time now. Most will claim to be non partisan (Fox News) but everyone knows they are conservative. There are complaints that bloggers will criticize the media for how they do their job and the media responds by saying that they should give it a try and see how easy it is. That isn’t the bloggers job though, just like it used to be the media’s job to critique the government, now it is the bloggers job to critique the media!

HW 2: Will Blogs Have Us Losing Face Time?

In reading David Kline and Dan Burstein’s Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture I was struck by the second observation they made at the end of the introduction. Burstein says, “Blogs are particularly interesting because they marry so much personality and attitude with this complex mix of software technologies.” He is saying that we do not have to fear of losing social interaction because we can unite and use the blogs for public discussion. In learning about blogs I was concerned about this topic. I thought that with the technology boom we are experiencing that the personal connections we have might be lost in favor of faceless conversations on the web. He is saying that the technology boom is happening, basically whether we like it or not and blogs might be the way to gain control back. If we can use this to our advantage we could actually have more power in the political and governmental fields than ever before. I like that there is more hope now for us to voice our opinions freely and without, “having to own a press”.