11/17/2004|||110071701853254048||||||

BLOGGERS SWAP NOTES

An enjoyable evening at the Adam Smith Institute discussion on blogging and democracy. (Other accounts are posted here and there.) To be honest, I was a little taken aback by the very British diffidence on display, as if we really shouldn't get too excited by all this high-tech mullarkey. Being a newcomer to the on-line universe, I didn't feel inclined to add my own thoughts, which was probably a mistake in retrospect: isn't the whole point of the blogosphere that we all have an opportunity to make a fool of ourselves in public?

How has blogging changed the way democracy operates? Here's one small example. Twenty years ago, when I had a temporary job as a gallery attendant, I found myself watching the late Bernard Levin wander around a Pissarro exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. He seemed an impossibly remote figure; it wouldn't even have crossed my mind to try to strike up a conversation with him. I don't suppose Levin, if he were alive today, would be a heavy-duty blogger, but I can never stop marvelling at the fact that readers now have a chance to sit on pundits' shoulders as they wrestle with their thoughts. That has to be progress.

It was great to meet Slugger O'Toole, by the way.

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/11/bloggers-swap-notes-enjoyable-evening.html|||11/17/2004 06:13:00 pm|||||||||

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