I wish I had the talent and background to do this subject like it deserves. Something very important is happening to the information industry, as important as the coming of the desktop computer to the computer industry.

There is a sea change going on in the way Americans, and much of the world, get their information. The linear top-to-bottom media, which funneled through about a dozen major sources when I was younger, is being replaced by what, for want of a better word, is called the "blogosphere," and more formal online sources.

Are these new sources any more likely to be accurate? Of course not. But the difference is that the system is no longer a linear process, but a network. And as such, it tends to be self-correcting, driven by hundreds of thousands of people watching everyone else for mistakes that they can catch and get credit for. There are accurate computer terms for this error correction process, I'm sure, but I don't work in that field. "Distributed processing" is as close as I can get.

Sure, you still have to use your own brain to filter out the crap. But that was true for the New York Times, too.

Reputation counts. Reliable sources tend to become stronger, and quoted more often. Bullshit sources tend to weaken, or settle into niche audiences who crave the bullshit. This operates across the entire political spectrum, and then some. And it's worldwide.

When I was in college, leftists had the idea of "economic democracy," where the present corporate structures would be replaced by some form of democratic system where the guy pushing the broom would have as much to say about how the company was run as the CEO.

The media is now morphing into an entity where a guy in a basement has the potential to make as big an impression as the editor of the New York Times--if he passes the muster of thousands of others and the passage of time. It isn't surprising that this process is derided by the Old Media and those who benefited by it. The last stake is being driven through the heart of William Randolph Hearst.

I honestly don't think many of our politicians have figured this out yet. I do note that the homepage of the Republican National Convention includes a blurb for the bloggers who will be covering it, but I don't think they've got it yet either.