Not really gaining too too much momentum all too quickly…

…which is O.K. and just means that the grinding- again, much like Tiger had to do at Torrey Pines- has to be the emphasis. And then it’s salga lo que salga, Bru… No what I am saying?

http://www.allbookstores.com/book/compare/0275989968 will link you to Aaron Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere price compare page on allbookstores.com’s Web Site which is a great- from a consumer’s point of view anyway- bookbuying site in that it gives you a whole range of sites that sell a particular book and their prices etc. and then y’all can do what you want.

I mentioned Barlow’s book in a previous post and if interested in some comments made during a perusal of it check out…(oops, I am having trouble with my Web Hosting so I will go ahead and post the somewhat lengthy comments on Barlow’s book here and when I can link to it at dialogD I will.

Blogs as the New Free Advocacy and Organizing Press- Some Notes while reading Aaron Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere
Thursday, May 01, 2008, 11:45 AM.
A quote:
“Certainly, in looking over the backgrounds of political blogs, one quickly finds that blogs are simply allowed by technology, not that they are caused by technology. The cultural forces that led individuals to adopt the blogs so readily as a means of political expression arose long before the technology appeared. In fact, those forces first arose along with the momentum toward revolution in the middle of the eighteenth century, only to be suppressed as the growing commercial and professional news media squeezed the public sphere almost to nonexistence.”
-From Aaron Barlow’s Introduction-
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Blogs as a new incarnation of citizen journalism. And in the case of my blogging a direct advocacy call for major citizen activism to the point of calling for a revolutionary change in American political reality…
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5/8/2008 12:53 PM
Chapter 2 “The Rise of Advocacy Journalism”
Blogs and bloggers as a new public space outside the mainstream. From which not only advocacy for candidates and ideas and policies still rising through the ranks of and under the fundamental control of the mainstream gatekeepers (IE corporate MSM, the two major bipartisan and thoroughly co-opted by mainstream funding interests Political Parties, the perceived consensus of money’s overriding and rightful place as the be all end all of whose voice can be taken “seriously” in the course of “business and politics as usual”) but an actual advocacy and organizing entity for an entirely different agenda than mainstream everything as it now carries out it’s relatively narrow and limiting function on how things are allowed to get done. And the way things now are able to get done or not get done is at the heart of the matter, is the crux of the problem that we collectively face.
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Blogs and what evolves from where they’re at now can also create new “Public Spaces” from which the new 2nd American Revolution can emerge out from. It will be made possible by the new technologies available through the Internet with respect to communications, education, organization, and cost efficiency in all these and other areas that will achieve a sort of flattening of access to the spheres of influence and power. It is the development of this new kind of access that a genuine peaceful yet Radically Evolutionary Progressive Grassroots Transformational Democracy Solidarity movement can actually be built from and eventually successfully gain and wield influence and power in the real world…
(a real world by the way where the Netroots play a role in organizing but are not confused as being the be all end all arbiters of what’s needed-given that the earliest bloggers and Netizens are mostly made up of “up from the upper middle class elites” and heavily techno gizmo oriented and entrenched and that crowd is so incredibly privileged within the current social, economic, and educational milieu that they can hardly be expected to be the sole cause or articulator of the radical sea changes that will be necessary for any of the semi progressive agendas they may be advocating for to be even remotely attainable)
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Now reading about Tom Paine (again in Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere) and very nearly falling deeply asleep… (Aside to Reader: not the fault of the book, author, it’s publisher, or any of their respective heirs)
“Paine united the rebellious faction of the colonies as no one else had and expanded the universe of political discourse to include even the unlettered… Eventually someone will take advantage of 21st century possibilities in a similar way…” -p.22 par.4-
Unlike most other pamphleteers Paine actually did present a plan for the future and not just complaints about contemporary injustice. -p.23 par.1-
The genesis of the law…must lie in the people. -p.23 par.3-
Just as bloggers are stepping around… (MSM) …Paine was sidestepping the colonial elite… -p.24 par.4-
A central American debate: more Democracy for everyone or Democracy just as a media show of the elites… to facilitate the efficient governance as they see fit of everyone except them and their cronies… while living with as little public sector Democratic control styled “smaller Guv’ment” over their self interested and aggrandizing shenanigans as possible. Currently we are in the throes of a new Gilded Age reactionary backlash of perhaps the most elite centered conservative dominance in this debate as ever in our history as a Nation.
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“Again, to date, no one of impact remotely akin to that of Paine has arisen from the blogs. It is possible that no one ever will (though, always the optimist, I believe such a person is just around the corner). However, when one remembers that is was societal demand for change along with technological change that set the stage for Paine’s entrance, it is hard to imagine that the social needs of the 21st Century, on top of the technological advances of the late 20th century, will not force Paine’s modern-day equivalent to step from the wings. –p.26 par.2-