2006_01_01_archive

blogs superior to television

"There has been a lot of tension among publishers about technology.

But if you ask me if I'd rather have someone watching television or

someone surfing the Internet, I'd prefer the Internet because it

requires some form of reading," says Richard Sarnoff, president of the

Random House, Inc. corporate development group, according to a recent

Associated Press report published in Quad City Times.

I think I see what he means.

We've already long ago established beyond any serious dispute the

supremacy of blogs over email and telephone communications.

To communicate with another person through blog comments or email

means that, simutaneously, as I read their remark or compose my reply,

can also listen to music, read a book, and eat pizza. I can't eat a

book, read music, and listen to coffee while talking on the phone to

someone.

Phoning someone is an invasive, demanding, selfish act.

Your aggressive act of telephoning someone means that you wish to have

someone's full attention for an uncertain duration of time.

If that wasn't bad enough, the communication has to be done in real

time. That other person you've decided to bother has to drop whatever

he's doing and engage in talking repartee with you.

Telephone conversations are interactive, which is good. But they're

also invasive real-time full-attention drainers.

Television viewing is largely passive. You interact with the

television when you turn it on, off, and change channels with the

remote. The screen contains all the movement necessary for the

communication. The viewer can remain stiff in a paralytic trance and

just soak it up.

With blogs, however, one must at least read. To interact, to post a

comment, one must type and know how to activate and cooperate with web

forms. And having something to say. And be able to articulate it in

text.

Even cats and dogs have been known to watch television. None have been

observed turning the pages of books with rapt attention to the plot or

topic.

Thus, blogs are better than television. Blogs are almost as good as

books. Blogs excel books in being interactive. Books excel blogs in