Blogging as a means of shifting the boundary between private and public

Acccording to Bill Thompson of BBC News: Technology, "the blogosphere has shifted the boundary between private and public, and made it much, much easier for anyone who desires it to engage in the public sphere."

For instance, Thompson suggests - "mention someone and they may well notice within hours thanks to Technorati or Delicious. Cross-link to another post and you become part of the fabric of the blogosphere.

And once your material is out and cached by Google or simply referenced and copied on other blogs, then it is hard work indeed to remove it from the public sphere."

Thompson ends on a very interesting note - "Our normal assumptions about what is and is not public, or about the proper limits on how widely we should share the things we see or hear or learn, no longer apply, but we have yet to figure out a new set of norms."

I take this to mean the blogosphere should be regulated in some way to save itself from itself. See Can we stop the bloggers? for more details.



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