Calgary professor Michael Keren has at best missed the forest for the trees. In a Globe and Mail article about his new book "Blogosphere: The New Political Arena," Keren suggests that "individuals who bare their souls in blogs are isolated and lonely, living in a virtual reality instead of forming real relationships or helping to change the world."
"Bloggers think of themselves as rebels against mainstream society, but that rebellion is mostly confined to cyberspace, which makes blogging as melancholic and illusionary as Don Quixote tilting at windmills," the author says.
I am not sure why bloggers deserve such special attention? Almost any creative is an attempt to reach out to people via self-expression. Bloggers just have a new medium. For me, blogging is a way of expressing and sharpening my thoughts. If I find a small cadre of similar-minded people to discuss these ideas, all the better.
In addition to that, blogging indulges my former (before school took over my life) passion for creative writing. I don't need a pedigree to express my beliefs. Some people may even find them more insightful than Keren's. Which brings me back to my favorite part of the article
In his book, Keren follows the blogs of nine individuals, including a Canadian woman living in the woods in a cabin in Quebec. She discusses her identity through stories about her two cats.
"One day one of the cats dies and the whole blogosphere becomes crazy about the death of this cat, and what happens is she gets a community of support which is not real.
"These are people with nicknames who express enormous support, but they can disappear in the next minute and they are not real, and she remains lonely in the end."
This is wrong on so many levels. If anything, this woman's readers have comforted her at a time of need. That is very real. Through blogging, this woman has been able to connect in a way that was not possible before.
But maybe I should cut Keren some slack. It must be a lonely, painstaking endeavor to research and write such a book.
