A blog is just another web site, like man is just another ape

I got to thinking after reading this wonderfully obtuse definition of blogging today quoted on Joho:

A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web.

Ahh, yes, a species of electronic diary, and an inferior one at that.

Blogger Randy Balko raises that bar a little.

blogs are nothing more than a relatively new way of distributing information, just as radio, television, newsprint, and conventional Web sites once were. Blogs differ from other media in that they provide links for easy referencing, they’re more easily and quickly updated (and, consequently, many times less carefully edited), they allow for more interaction between reader and publisher, and there’s virtually no barrier to entry ‘ meaning just about anyone can start his or her own blog. You don’t need to win the approval of an editor. You don’t need start-up money from a publisher. You don’t need a radio tower.

Bloggers also can operate outside the “rules” and standards ‘ in terms of attribution, verification of sources, objectivity and concerns for libel and lawsuits ‘ that are supposed to govern traditional journalism.

Other than that, blogs aren’t all that different the traditional media. The “blogosphere” isn’t so much an alternative to the conventional newsstand as it is a massive extension of it.

Kinda like saying that man nothing more than a newer edition of the ape, except he’s got some tools and sometimes uses them and a bigger brain and, oh, yeah, an opposable thumb… oh, and speach too. But other than that, man is just more of the same. That is of course, true, if one is looking at chemical composition and basic functionality, but dramatically underplays the fun of the new model. It’s like saying that a bottle-rocket is just salt-peter, sulfur and charcole with a little fire mixed in. Nothing more, really.

Sometimes quantitative changes become qualitative changes. And the emergence of the blogosphere is one of those times.

See blogs ARE just web sites that allow human beings to publish without editors. Not much really. But put thousands of these things together at once, wire ’em up at the speed of light, pull them together from across the globe into a space that is 9 x 12 inches and give them all instant access to 60% of everything ever known by man… and you’ve got something magical. And fundamentally new.

A few bees are a pain… ten thousand bees, operating at the speed of light, are a mighty mean swarm that overwhelms anything the media ecosystem has yet mutated out of the inky, pixilated muck over the last 400 years.

The monkey has spoken. The fuse is lit. The swarm is aloft.

There’s no turning back.

The blogosphere is nothing more than a new species of… consciousness… mind… society?

We’ll see.