Blogging

Ann Althouse writes:

One thing about written blogs is you can glance over them quickly and decide how much you want to read. These podcast recordings impose their time frame on you. A slow talker forces you to listen longer. A slow writer doesn’t cause you to read slowly.

This is exactly right and I think helps to explain why video blogging isn’t the boon some people think it should be. The reader controls his entire experience; the listener controls some of it; and the watcher of videos, if he is paying attention, is more controlled by the experience than in control (a fact not lost on propagandists, which may explain why the likes of Leni Riefenstahl and Michael Moore tend to produce movies rather than essays). As a blog reader, I want to read what I want, quickly — not watch TV.

Video has a place on blogs, especially in reporting about tsunamis and other events that are dramatic and not abstract. But to watch some guy talk? Nah.

UPDATE: Ann adds, among other comments:

I agree here too. And this point applies in many areas, even ones as far afield as gauges on machines, and voicemail systems. Canned-voice feedback and voice-response systems are usually poor substitutes for the written word, and even for buttons and visual signals.

(See here for an old rant on a related topic.)

Left to right: Notorious BRD, ChicagoGrrl.

OK, turnout was a bit disappointing, but I got to meet fellow blogger Bravo Romeo Delta, who is a nice guy, and had a good chat with the witty and ravishing ChicagoGrrl (before she flew off to her next engagement). Unfortunately neither individual waited as I prepared my cumbersome glass plates, so the photo is somewhat lacking.

I came across a blog that I think would be of interest to everyone here. It’s Rantingprofs. It’s authored by Cori Dauber, who’s an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina.

So what’s the subject of her blog? Cori posts about the media coverage of the War on Terror.

From what I can see, she’s none too happy about the news media’s performance.

Let’s start with some background first.

Jack Burton sent me a link to this website. With $699.99 US you, too, could have owned a handheld laser powerful enough to burn a hole through a plastic cup, or to put a dot on a cloud or tree miles away.

One of the lasers was used a few weeks ago to illuminate the cockpit of a commercial airplane at takeoff. Nothing happened except for an annoyed cockpit crew, and the plane continued on to its destination without incident. The Homeland Security guys felt compelled to issue a warning about it because they’d be in trouble if something did happen and they hadn’t said anything about it.

Now Prof. Reynolds has a post up talking about the commercial plane, and I’m waiting for an instalanche. (Probably won’t happen.)

As you might guess from my previous posts, I’m very skeptical about a terrorist using a laser to good effect. There seem to be so many problems with developing and fielding a working laser that even the US military doesn’t have one in its arsenal yet. But that doesn’t mean that some experimentation isn’t going on.

The go-to guy for info on the possibility for laser weapons (or even for new developments in military gear) is Murdoc Online. Case in point is this post from last year, where Murdoc points out that the Taipei Times is warning about a laser threat. I don’t think it’s any more credible than Murdoc did at the time.

Murdoc also let us know about an experimental laser system that’s mounted on a Humvee. The idea being to use the laser to destroy roadside bombs. I have no idea if it actually worked as advertised or if it’s something that didn’t pan out. Since I haven’t seen any press releases from the companies which make laser gear trumpeting how the US government is sending them large orders, I’d have to say that it probably is something that won’t be showing up any time soon.

Murdoc also has a post where he talks about simple, cheap laser defense. In all fairness the contact lenses mentioned only work against a specific frequency of laser light, but they would work.

So there you have it. Some idiot decides to use his souped-up laser pointer as a prank and Homeland Security warns of terrorists with Star Wars weapons. I suppose the prankster is happy. After all, even though no one knows who he is, he’s still kinda famous now.

I posted this review of Jim Bennett’s new book, The Anglosphere Challenge, on Amazon.

Janus-Faced Book Studies the Past to Illuminate the Future

James Bennett popularized the term “Anglosphere”, which refers to those communities which speak English and share in the cultural practices and institutions inherited from England, e.g. common law, parliamentary democracy, highly developed civil society, private rather than communal notions of property, entrepreneurial rather than state-led economic development, relative openness to innovation and to immigration. These characteristics have been developing in the English-speaking world for at least a millennium. Bennett draws on the work of Alan MacFarlane and David Hackett Fischer to demonstrate the uniqueness of the civilization which developed in England and which it passed on to its daughter polities, primarily the United States. This Anglosphere civilization has been the path-breaker for modernity, initiating modern democratic institutions and the industrial and subsequent economic revolutions. Note that Bennett does not offer this analysis in any spirit of triumphalism. This is not the old “Whig theory” of history, since Bennett correctly sees that these developments were the result of fortunate historical contingency. Bluntly, those of us who live in the Anglosphere are not better than anybody else, just luckier. Bennett predicts that the Anglosphere will continue to be the cutting edge civilization in terms of economic and political development. In particular, the existence of the Web has already created a unitary Anglophone economic and cultural space, which will develop further as the highest value-added products become increasingly information-intensive, placing a premium on linguistic and cultural commonalities. Bennett offers predictions concerning the institutional form that this new economic reality will call forth, which he labels a “network commonwealth”. Bennett believes that this future political form, and a dense and robust underlying civil society, present the best hope for coping with the hazards presented by emerging technology, and obtaining the benefits of that technology. Moreover, Bennett offers numerous, concrete policy proposals to further the development of this emerging Anglosphere network commonwealth, in the areas of trade, immigration, defense procurement and military cooperation. Bennett’s book is the result of years of reflection on these historical and contemporary issues. This short paragraph does not even scratch the surface of a book that has many novel insights and profound ideas, and which opens up numerous lines for further inquiry. Five stars is really not a sufficient rating. This is one of the three or four most important books I have read in recent years to understand the world we are living in, why it is the way it is, where we are going, and how we can create a future worth living in.