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Blog Action Day
aroberts writes "Today is Blog Action Day which means that lots of bloggers will be writing on one general topic for one day in an attempt to see what might be achieved through coordinated posting, and I am one of them so my humble contribution amongst the hundreds of thousands is entitled individual action is not enough. The topic for this year's blog action day is the environment." You can almost hear the sound of the vacuum created by bloggers thinking that their words matter when the people with control don't even know how to read the tubes. Lick a stamp or march- that's harder to ignore.
Tumbleweed drifts past....
Oh arse
that's why the founding fathers were waisting their time writing all those pamphlets. i doubt the king or the parliament read those. so what value did they hold?
most blogs are day journals and have very low readership - but there are a number of blogs that directly impact the thinking and actions of thousands of readers. in aggregate there are millions influenced - and if those millions act in a coordinated fashion, they become the ones in control.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
And yet Josh Marshall and his blog Talking Points Memo managed to break the U.S. attorney firing scandal -- a scandal that ultimately led to the removal of the Attorney General, the highest law enforcement officer in the U.S. This despite the fact that the AG's boss hardly knows how to read, much less to read the "tubes".
I'm not saying that all blogs can have this kind of impact. TPM succeeded because they did the hard work of unearthing the story and keeping it alive when nobody else cared about it; most bloggers do it for fun and don't have that level of commitment. But it's silly to make sweeping generalizations dismissing the impact blogs can have when the evidence to the contrary is all around us.
Read my blog.
Blogs are like any other kind of media. You have your large, successful, commercial entities that command a lot of power in people's mindspace.
Then you have all the other entities whose purposes are varied, and appeal either to a select audience, some sort of niche; and you have entities that essentially appeal to the author's vanity.
It's important to remember that, much like a crowd, blogs don't have a unified voice. And their voices are harder to find. Blogging does leave an impression on people, but let's not pretend it's this world-shaking thing that we've never had before. It's just another method of publishing and social interaction rolled into one.
[ think ]
After reading all of these comments, there seems to be a lot of vitriol and disdain towards "bloggers." You people realize, surely, that you're commenting on what is basically the world's largest blog, right? What makes you think that your comments matter?
People are sheep, people dont want to be bothered, people cant be expected to miss the latest episode of lost because of a city council meeting.
All the lip service the environment has going for it and nobody is still willing to do anything about it. Many recycling programs fail because people do not want to bother with separating their trash. Free or subsidized insulation programs for the inner city poor fail fast because nobody cares to donate. Nobody fights city hall to remove laws restricting alternative power. boo hoo that you dont want to look at solar panels on my roof. Being a selfish ass does not help the environment.
Until you can change the human thought patterns to actually care about others and the big picture nothing will change no matter how much lip service is given to it. If you can prove that driving a SUV causes birth defects or causes death, sales of the things will not go down.
People need to stop singing to the Choir and figure out how to make the average sheep pay attention. Figure that out and the environment will be an easy fix.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I am NOT an environmentalist. I will NOT sacrifice my lifestyle for "the greater good." I am focused on my family first, idealism is a WAY distant second. However, some wise environmentalists are starting to make the programs reasonable. Our power company, no doubt as part of the deal with the government, ran a program for insulation. They inspected the insulation for free, gave a credit for insulation, and brought a list of contractors for us to choose from AND set up the install. I just had to sit at home and have a check ready when they showed up, sealed my ducts, and blew in insulation. Because of the credit, in four months I've recovered half the cost of the insulation, making it a no brainer, and the environment wins.
My roof is coming up due for replacement. The technology of panels on the roof was expensive, didn't save money in the time frame that most people own their houses, and was extremely ugly. However, the new technology of "panel roofs," where you have tile-like installations on the roof was starting to be feasible, as the labor to install on the roof was about the same, but the electrical hookups were costly. The new systems come in "sheets" so they are easier to install than roof tiles, integrate with the roof, and should, in time, cost about the same to install as a normal new roof. As the costs (after tax breaks) comes down, more people will use them. Demanding ugly roofs on people's homes with a "boo hoo" will not get you buy in, but come up with a series of tax incentives and let the free market develop solutions that people want and you can actually get progress.
If you really want recycling efforts, then you need to make it easy for people, convenient, and ideally provide some incentive to them doing so. Just like some states offer deposits with refunds for recycling cans/bottles, why not have a scale in the curb-side pickup of recycled materials, and give people a credit on their garbage bill.
People aren't sheep, people are autonomous individuals. Their willingness to spend their free time on your pet projects instead of their families is pretty limited. I don't see you offering free babysitting services or transportation for their kids to after school events to free up time for people to do what you want. I don't hear that you're donating money, you just want other people to do so.
Blogging might influence dunderhead journalists who are too lazy to do any first-hand research or reporting to write a story, which might cause John Q. Public to write a letter to a politician, who might modify his behavior because of it.
But mostly it's masturbation. The schlubs at the blogs, for example, really think they're DOING SOMETHING. But at the end of the day they're just whining. If they're really lucky some politician might pretend to care, but politicians cater to those who have money and those who can deliver votes. That's it, and that's all.
It's no coincidence that most American politics revolve around the interests of corporations, the interests of powerful lobbies like AIPAC, and the interests of SEIU (the last and only effective union in America). If you're AIPAC, for example, and can deliver both money and votes, you're golden. They represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction, but they vote and give money in lockstep. So hey presto! we're invading Iraq, even though the vast majority of Americans can't even point to that country on a map; They're also on the verge of pushing our government to attack Iran, though the vast majority of American voters want out of the first mess they created in Iraq.
So in reality, blogs are irrelevant. Are and always will be.
The key to results in democratic systems is to be able to execute swiftly and with near-unanimity. If, for example, Slashdot readers were able to initiate and execute a general strike to oppose, say, abuse at the USPTO, or the passage of the DMCA, you better believe the powers-that-be would sit up and take notice if their electronic trading systems handling billions of dollars went down. If you think about it, the sort of people who read Slashdot control the computer networks that are the nervous system of our modern world. They hold all the cards and could compel many changes in our world if they worked together.
But they don't, because Slashdot is really just a blog for geeks who post or vent and think they've done their bit. They take no actual action beyond that.
If they did, just imagine the possibilities.
Chew, and digest.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Syntax aside, while I understand your POV, I have to disagree. The house-on-fire would be the wars, yes. The destabilisation of our environment, on the other hand, is the raging forest-fire that is about to engulf your house and your town.
If the world's natural resources - fossil fuels AND agriculturally viable land-area - continue to deplete, the wars you're seeing now will someday be remembered fondly for their relative civility and restraint. When whole nations start competing aggressively for scarce resources in an effort to maintain their dominance or their way of life, the cracks in our currently-civilised facade will split right open.
Seriously, in the long run, it's a MUCH bigger issue.
Meta will eat itself
"Everything else is just you complaining that you don't want to be bothered to make a sacrifice where there may not even be a payoff."
Fixed that to make it accurately reflect reality.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.