First, there are different types of blogging, just as there are different types of print media. You have to get your mind around the fact that blogging is merely a vehicle of expression, adaptable to many different contexts, styles and purposes. Kind of like word processing. Dvorak tries to use IBM's failure as a corporation to spark the blogging bug in its employees as an example of why blogging isn't all that and a slice of cheese like its fans say. But comparing corporate activity with personal hobby activity is ridiculous. I don't know what IBM's purpose for encouraging blogging is, but I doubt it's the same as my purpose for doing it. Apples and oranges. No relation. Blogging is a tool, not a flavor or a style. Dvorak concludes from his already logic-lite argument that only a very small fraction of computer users will ever actively blog. And that undermines blogging because.....? Only a fraction of readers will ever be journalists, and an even smaller fraction will be columnists. Should we thus dismiss columnists as useless flashes in the pan with no value? (Don't tempt me.) To the extent that blogging has power beyond the individual voice, it's through not just how many do it, or even how many read them. It's because of who reads them. A lot of opinion- and decision-makers on the local, state, national and international level either use blogs to influence opinion or read blogs to gauge opinion in various sectors, including that knowledge in their information gathering and decision making. And it's also important that the bloggers are providing information that isn't available as soon, or as completely, in the MSM. Besides, Thomas Paine was just one man, right? Harriet Beecher Stowe, just one woman. Who's to say sheer numbers make the argument?Nice job refuting points that were probably too weak to have been printed. One thing to note is that his odd mirroring of IBM's success onto the whole blogosphere is based on his own perspective which is well rooted on the corporate side of PC Technology.
Actually, you have to know the history of Mr. Dvorak to understand his current comments in full, not to mention the special amounts of vitriol the Mac zealots have for him. See, he used to be a Mac guy, then he went to the dark side. That ranks as apostasy for the lunatic Mac jihadists, so they will go out of their way to dump venom on Dvorak, instead of ignoring him for the (mostly) idiot he appears to be.
That being said, he has a point about the weblogs and the recent “Apple vs. Bloggers” case. Almost every reporter and blog got the whole story wrong from the get-go. ‘Cept me, of course. The case was always about theft, thieves, and stolen property and the oh-so-pious Mac fanboy press and MSM kept insisting this was a First Amendment broadside from Apple. That was the party line, and woe unto ye who did not toe that line, even if it was wrong.
I couldn’t care less about being percieved as “wrong”, I have always gone where the evidence leads. If the baby is ugly, draping the baby in rose petals isn’t gong to change that basic fact. I stuck to my guns, and everyone else hammered away, and then the judge ruled, and I was right. He didn’t even touch the First Amendment issues because he had no need. Theft is theft is theft, and First Amendment considerations be damned, nobody has a “right” to steal.
Anyone reading Judge K.’s opinion will see he really put the rhetorical and legal smackdown on the “movants”. He even called them “fences”, as in the resellers-of-stolen-property sense of the word. Yea and verily he did smite them mightily. But still the brainless Mac press drones on about “ducking the issue” and First Amendment ad nauseum, no matter the facts of the case.
So while I don’t generally support what Dvorak says at any given point in time, on this issue he has struck the nail square on the head. Or as my idol Gen. George Patton put it -
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.
I think the Napster generation has a real issue coping with the whole concept of intellectual property rights. I agree that the judge made the correct call and that Apple was well within their rights to sue.
As I stated above, I have always enjoyed Dvorak’s snarky pulse on the industry. But he is wrong sometimes and I think Susanna is spot on regarding the weakness of his blog analysis.
Oh, and thanks for adding a little history on Dvoraks ‘light side’ days. That explains alot!
http://king-of-fools.com/blog/trackback/1766/4fMDwP7P/