We've discussed this before, and you know I don't quite share your pure vision of the Internet...from my perspective you're being a bit Utopian. Systems analysis is a powerful tool for looking at the Net, and the blogosphere in particular, and I'm glad you took that approach.

When I look at the Net as a system, I'm very conscious of the duality of it. The visible technology provides a platform...call it a pulpit...for the other, and to me more important, half of the Net: The participation of humans who are using it to create a social structure, like we've taken advantage of every other technology since fire allowed us to huddle by the campfire and learn to tell stories.

There's a netowrk of human relationships simultaneously enabled by the technology, and shaped by it. The blogosphere is a vivid example because it consists of a myriad of nodes (at each of which the network node is mapped 1-to-1 to a human) who deliberately devote a significant part of their effort to linking up with other nodes. As with any other human network, distance and affinity characterize the blogosphere network. People form more links with like-minded people than with people they disagree with or who are too "foreign" for comfort. People clump--this kind of network is not a smooth tapestry with an equal distribution of nodes. There's a distance between concentrations with their own densely-connected networks; the blogosphere is a global internetwork of local clique networks1.

Therein lies the rub regarding your assertion that the blogosphere is more accurate than formal media because bloggers are constantly being reviewed by their peers. Well, yeah, they're far more likely to be reviewed by genuine peers who happen to share their general point of view and philosophy. The technology layer doesn't do fact-checking; the human layer has to make a conscious decision to do it. The technology actually works against fact-checking by giving more weight (providing more links) to adjacent POVs, while forcing people more inclined to skepticism to travel a farther distance to review the work2. I see a lot of groupthink in the blogosphere, and while most of it arises spontaneously through the rapid transfer of memes to nodes close by, the blogosophere network is vulnerable to deliberate insertion of memes. I think it's too easy to plant an idea into a sympathetic clique-network and have it spread like wildfire.

What the blogosphere lacks is the formalism of traditional journalism. We all know the formula of the newsroom system: Multiple sources to corroborate an item; review by at least one editor; at bigger newsrooms researchers and fact-checkers. Sure it breaks down occasionally, and it's big news when it breaks down at places like the NYT. Doesn't that tell you something about the value of the system when it's working?

There's not a perfectly unbiased news organization in the world. Objectivity arises from a diversity of viewpoints in the newsroom; conversely, bias arises because of groupthink in the newsroom. It's also a given that any one news outlet is powered by multiple people, sometimes thousands, and the more people involved the more likelihood of skepticism. Contrast that with the blogosphere, in which each news outlet is the product of one person, somebody with a strong point of view to motivate him or her to want to be heard; with no internal checks and balances, only the dubious feedback mechanism of like-minded people in the same cyberneighborhood.

Note another significant difference: The traditional journalistic process takes place before publication, while in the blogosphere the reviews and fact-checking come after. Doing it the blogosphere way means that bad information gets loose and spreads, and the correction has to come along later behind it. This lowers the signal-to-noise ratio and makes the blogosphere an excellent channel for propaganda.

Sorry, Tom, but I just don't see the present blogosphere as anywhere close to providing better quality and more objectivity. It's more like a vast echo chamber miked and amped for positive feedback. Might as well call it the "lemmingsphere".

That's not to say that it can't evolve into something better. But it won't be easy, because it would mean compromising the essence of blogging, individuality and independence, to create accountability systems which build credibility. A blogger would have to agree to submit his work for a private review by people who want to play the role of editors and fact-checkers, and agree to publish only after vetting and to accept reasonable corrections3. That's not going to be an easy idea to promote in a culture of a million propagandists.

I haven't run out of words, just out of time. Praise be to heaven, eh?

1: The Internet is an internetwork that connects up local networks. I think one reason for its success is that it's a technology that maps closely on to existing human social structures.

2:In theory any two points are equidistant on the Net, but the reality is that people traverse the Net in small steps, from link to link. There are more links separating, say, the Democratic and Republican blogosphere clusters, than separate the Swifties from whitehouse.gov. The number of links translates into virtual distance.

3: The reviewers can't come from the local agreementhood, obviously...maybe it needs a matchmaking service to pair lefties and righties to cancel their charges; one Democrat plus one Republican creates a Neutrocrat that can't affect anything and has no bias.