photoblogger<\/a>),
\n and South Korea, where the world’s first Internet President has just
\n turned back a tide of analog antagonism, were presented and discussed
\n as examples of thriving non-US dimensions of the Blogosphere.<\/p>\nProblems were admitted and discussed. Uneven internet and broadband
\n penetration, skewed socioeconomic representation, political repression
\n and government control of server access were all brought up and kicked
\n around the table. The language barrier and the embryonic state of machine
\n translation, even after 30 years of intense efforts by linguists and
\n programmers, was described and decried. But still, a sense of optimism
\n and increasing awareness that the Blogosphere is truly a land without
\n borders
\n was evident.
\n A strong case was made that the revolution in substance and sensibility
\n which is the secret promise of blogging is even more desperately needed,
\n and may actually be further along, outside of the United States.<\/p>\n
Of course, the difficulties in convincing Americans, who think they
\n invented air, to admit that anyone is further along in anything than
\n they are, are legendary. The idea that we may be able to learn something
\n worthwhile from a foreigner is shocking and offensive to many in this
\n deeply ethno- and linguo-cenetric culture of ours.<\/p>\n
Several interesting ideas were proposed to overcome the Balkanization
\n of Blogging. One idea we heard, echoing the substance of one of our very
\n first posts, was the creation of a Bloggers’ Mapa Mundi, a large virtual
\n map of the world linked to relevant or noteworthy blogs around the globe.
\n We would like to take a moment to elaborate on how such a resource could
\n work.<\/p>\n
Suppose you heard a rumor, or a sound-byte, or read a passing reference,
\n to something interesting going on in, say, Ulan Bator. Assuming you
\n know a little about geography (a dangerous assumption when dealing with
\n Americans below a certain age, these days), you could go to the Mapa
\n Mundi, and click on the area in question.<\/p>\n
Up would pop a page containing a) a brief profile of the country, population,
\n history, political organization and socioeconomic data; b) a list of
\n the top English-language blogs in the area (at present, most of these
\n would probably be of the ubiquitous ex-Pat variety) and c) a list of
\n the top native-language blogs as well. In countries with large numbers
\n of
\n blogs,
\n like Iran or
\n China, these lists could be broken down by province or geographic zone,
\n as well as by Blog-type (personal, political, protest, etc.).<\/p>\n
Who would do the admittedly time-consuming work of setting up and administering
\n a system like this? The most reasonable proposal we heard was that existing
\n English-language bloggers who care could volunteer to be responsible
\n for a single country or zone. The Dowbrigade has dibs on Ecuador.<\/p>\n
One last idea that occurred to us post-session, as a way to break down
\n the barriers to peace, love, and understanding represented by the Tower
\n of
\n Babel paradigm,
\n would be a coordination between ex-Pat and local bloggers.
\n In each country, some of the foreign bi-lingual English-language bloggers
\n could "adopt" a top native-language Blog for a mutually broadening exchange
\n of posts and views. On a regular basis, the English-language blogger
\n would translate and summarize important postings from the native-language
\n blog they were working with, making these first-person insights and reporting
\n available to a wider audience. The local blogger could do the same
\n with the postings of their English-language "brother Blogger". (No sexism
\n intended, merely an alliterative adoption of "sister city")<\/p>\n
At any rate, we REMAIN even more convinced that the only hope the forces
\n of freedom and virtual light have in breaking the worldwide monopoly
\n and stranglehold of the major media over the global attention
\n span is by working together, learning from each other, and developing
\n a functional solidarity that transcends language, local political bickering
\n and geographically based ethnocentrism. Blogging breaks barriers,
\n and the world is our oyster.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During the final session at BloggerCon I, in October of last year, the Dowbrigade, still a blogging neophyte at that point and incredibly intimidated by the famous names and aggregated flow in attendance, made his hesitant first and only intervention … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}