Thursday, March 27, 2008

[power of the blogosphere] at the end of a switch

How it started


The power of the blogosphere, particularly the UK sphere, was shown in the Usmanov affair, if you recall, where the Uzbek bully-boy forced certain blogs off air because he disagreed with them.

That was reversed and the result was a sort of camaraderie between certain of us.

But who is "us"? Well, it doesn't appear to be the "myspacer youth" or "the garden looked lovely this morning" type.

I suppose it's a loosely defined club of political bloggers, mostly male, who inhabit the sphere and charge around each others' blogs doing what they can.

I feel proud to be partially accepted into this although my personal reputation is slightly left field.

The Kareem rally was a little less successful for mainly logistical reasons and for the lack of clear intent - how would this change things?

The recent "ban the UK Chancellor from all pubs" campaign began like this:

I'm delighted to say that [as of Tuesday afternoon] the Snob's campaign to get Alistair Darling barred from every pub in the land has now crossed over, with today's Edinburgh Evening News covering the story.

News of the first pubs to take action is also now trickling in. Let's just say I wouldn't go to Lewes on my summer hols if I were him.

A worthy cause indeed but perhaps not relieving the suffering in Darfur or getting the troublemakers like DEFRA removed from positions of influence. Plus one other very worrying, ever-present danger for the blogger, for example in Myanmar:

The 45 megabit per second circuit connecting Myanmar to Kuala Lumpur that is Myanmar’s primary connection to the Internet came back up at 14:27 UTC today. It had mostly been “hard down,” indicating either that it had been unplugged or that the router it was connected to was turned off, with the exception of a few brief periods since September 28.

The truth is, chaps, we can be disconnected at any moment and the tools we use hacked:

Did Laura hack Blogrolling.com?

Blogrolls around the globe now all point to Laura's blog. Laura doesn't sound like your stereotypical evil hacker to me, but something sure went wrong at Blogrolling.com. Anyone know what? Laura's blog seems to have gone down what with all the hits it must be getting, but you can still read Google's cache of it.

It's a very tenuous thread connecting us to each other and thus the notion that we can be a powerful force in society must be seen in this context.

8 comments:

  1. James,

    Ultimately, there are thirteen plugs to pull to end the internet.

    STB.

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  2. Lest face it - most blogs wouldn't be missed would they? I have joined the campaign to bar Alistair Darling on the grounds he has two tone eyebrows- very weird...

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  3. Mutley - that's a most important point you make.

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  4. Interesting and you are right about the tenuous thread. But hey, I campaigned about the bully-boy as well!

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  5. PS: Like Mutley's comment - how nice to see a man being judged on his appearance!

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  6. And 3 of them were pulled recently causing a very slow internet service around the globe!!!

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