My love and fear for the blog

So i've been neglecting mine for a while. Call it writer's block.

But a lot of other bloggers have NOT been neglecting their blogs.

If you've been paying attention to any type of media, you'll see that there's this huge bruhaha over some documents released re: Bush's military record. And the interesting part of this story is that Bloggers are fueling the reporting of this story.

I think this phenomenon is fabulous. After working for big media for a couple of years (as a researcher even) I think making the people responsible for the news they read is an awesome celebration of the concept of freedom of the press. Similar to the way the major music lables had a hold on music until Napster came along, Blogs are quickly destroying the conventional method of acquiring news, analysis, and good old information.

However, I have a fear. I fear blogs are young, and their impact is vast. This kind of analysis has no way of leaving a trace, leaving its history. There are no buildings full of archival issues. Unless someone prints out every post and everything connected to it, there is no easy way to ever retrieve this information again. If we ever lose the ability to go online, the ability to email, the ability to network, the ability to have electricity at our beck and call, we will lose this critical moment in news publishing history.

And not only to document what is true, but to document what may not be true. This morning, I watched this flash presentation about what happened to the plane that flew in to the Pentagon on 9.11. It basically lays information at the doorstep of the theory that the US government flew a missile into the Pentagon, that it was no plane. It lays "supporting" quotes to the claim, quoted from various news reports.

I do vaguely remember hearing about this while i was working at CNN, and in the months immediately following the attack, the same way I remember hearing on the radio the morning of 9.11 that Fort Knox was hit, that the Golden Gate Bridge was hit. Now, this may be a legitimate piece of reporting. At the moment, I refuse to believe that the government blew up the Pentagon. (for people who are freaked out by this trailer as i was, here's SNOPES version) However, there will be no record of it. It is only in this intangible form on the internet. I think it would be great for people to see this, or see more material like this, to dig deeper into this dialectic that otherwise we would never be participating in.

There will be no headlines to hold up, no paper to point to. I sometimes imagine the aliens that will visit this planet years after we have destroyed ourselves. I imagine them walking into cities to find homes destroyed, buildings demolished. But like every good imaginary alien scene, they will stumble upon scraps of newspaper that tumble down the street, giving away the "Annihilation!" or "DOOM!" that comes before a civilization is destroyed.

Yes, the same could be said for television. If we don't have a player, tv, AND electricity, all that stuff is meaningless. But i feel like what Blogging is onto is bigger than televsion.

It is truly democratic broadcasting.

So, I'm going to think about this for the next few weeks - about a way to record the blather that myself, my friends, and my colleagues dump onto this vast network on a daily/weekly basis. (or monthly, as i've been lately)

Question of the day: Have any ideas about how to make this blog thing more real? Or does it need to be?