The dangers of the blogosphere dialogue
Monday, May 22, 2006 at 9:25AM I like blogging. It's an online diary of your thinking that you share with others. That's an old-fashioned definition nowadays, because blogging has gotten so professional and so competitive--as in, "I can't just be different to be good, you have to be wrong for me to be right."
I understand the desire to be competitive. Few of us are ever have the chance to do more formal pubs, like article and books, because the competiton there gets even harder and for most of us, entry into those venues constitutes years of career effort.
So the blogosphere is a short cut. You don't have to play baseball for years on end to make it to the major league game: you just scream loud enough from the stands and pretend it's all the same.
Now, that's a cruel comparison, but it speaks to the point of investment. I've spent a life investing in my vision, so naturally I defend it. The blogosphere demands you defend against all comers, no matter the credentials. Whoever gets the pack moving that minute is the top dog, which is both good and bad. It's good in that ideas alone can drive the process and it's bad in that it encourages a mob mentality.
The mob mentality is accentuated by the web's incredible speed and sense of impatience. Everyone wants everything decided so fast. Long-term discussion in the blogosphere extends typically hours or days, and some of that speed is good, reflecting the democracy of the debate, but a lot of it is just plain bad--the instinctive rush to judgment.
Imagine Eisenhower trying to run Normady in the age of the Internet. Imagine how hard it would be to execute the grand strategy of that X-year war versus the reality of being a John Abizaid or a Pete Schoomaker trying to execute an X-decade Long War. These guys have to take the long view, not jump through their assholes over every data point.
But that is just what the blogosphere is best at: jumping through its collective asshole over every data point--the second it appears ("Did you just see that...!").
At its worst, the blogosphere is just a huge, asynchronous game of "telephone" where the message gets more confused the longer it's passed around.
I find that the vast majority of the debate of my ideas in the blogosphere is conducted by people who've never seen my brief or read my books, and yet, if I eschew any efforts in their direction I'm considered to be running away from the fight.
Then you have to deal with the people who have read or seen your more formal stuff (you know, the stuff you actually spent a lot of time putting together vice the quick stuff you post on the web), and most of the time, they want to reduce your thinking down to something they can shoot down in a post. My favorite current example is to interpret everything I say through Iraq and Iraq alone. You know, I didn't write "War and Iraq in the 21st Century," but rather "War and Peace." Iraq is definitely an example of war, but just one of the past few years and war itself is but a very small subset (and increasingly smaller subset in general) of peace, which is more widespread now around the planet that at any point in human history. So yeah, doing Iraq badly shows how connectivity can be badly achieved, but that example hardly invalidates all the New Core powers emerging positively through such connectivity, which, when done well, is naturally about 95% private-sector driven and only about 5% public-sector.
Did I write all of that sort of bigger-than-just-war stuff in my books? Yes. Is that stuff explored in most of this critical posts? Absolutely not. Instead, everything is reduced to Iraq just like containment was reduced to Vietnam. But guess what? Containment was right and it was originally envisioned as being overwhelmingly economic (which it ended up being), so saying Kennan got it wrong in Vietnam simply misses the point that grand stratgegy isn't about getting every damn step right, but keeping your steps and your momentum all moving in roughly the right direction over the long haul. So yes, we push connectivity as a rule, and no, it will not work wonders by itself in all things. But that's true about most things we follow as a general rule in our lives.
But I understand that the blogosphere, despite its pretensions, is by and large uninterested in that sort of dialogue. It's all about hits--despite the claim of "alternative media," the dynamics are pretty much the same as the standard venues. Fine and dandy. It's a free world and all. And you're certainly free yourself to engage them on these direct points. It's just that I find that when I do, the subject gets farther and farther away from useful conversation the longer I pursue it. Pretty soon, I'm reading comments and cross-posts that are so off from the original concept that I wonder what the hell I'm doing engaging in this destructive conversation with strangers (most of whom won't use their real names and I ask you, Would you accept that from someone you engaged in conversation over beers at a party?).
And frankly, that's how I look at the blogosphere, which--again--is probably old-fashioned and not respective enough of its growing heft. To me, it's just a big party with lotsa conversations about three beers in. Fun as hell. Often very profound. But the vast majority of it leaves your brain by the next morning.
I will confess: I didn't like high school. I thought it was all really artificial and fake and queer as the day was long. It was this warped universe of unreality, where "So-and-so said you're a real two-face" is the sort of social dynamic that ruled your day.
The blogosphere is frighteningly like high school: some cool people who are always nice to you, a few that seem strangely intent on persecuting you, and an undifferentiated mass that seems to move from fight to fight (always so happy to chant, "fight! fight! fight!).
I wish I took it all more seriously, but I can't. I have loads of opportunity in my various day jobs to have seriously deep and exploratory conversations and interaction with a host of dedicated practitioners in my chosen field. I find those interactions eminently satifisfying and validating. Not in any "I'm always right" sense, because I'm not, but rather in a sort of "you're onto something and I want to help" sense.
Yes, there is some of that in the blogosphere, and I benefit from it more than most in the efforts of people like Mark Safranski and Dan Abbott. But Dan's a good point to explore, because I found my dynamic with him to be very familiar, meaning one I've participated in from both sides countless times in my career, and a description would be instructive I think.
Here's the generic description: One guy wants to engage another guy he looks up to. To get his attention, he makes a startling, cheeky criticism. They go back and forth, and it gets testy. Then the "elder" guy says something nice about the "younger" guy and the younger guy is thrilled. The ice is broken, and then the conversation really begins.
Ask yourself, how many times you've been through this dynamic with people, both where you're the younger or you're the older. You make a small connection, and all of a sudden the walls come down. The younger person feels acceptance, the older person feels less threatened, and dialogue takes off.
That is essentially what happened with Dan and me, but frankly, that's also what's happened with me and a host of "elders," to include people like Tom Friedman, whom obviously I admire and model myself after and at whom I've occasionally take inappropriate pot shots (like my review of "World is Flat") because--damn it!--I'd like him to notice me and take me more seriously. Well, Friedman sent me a couple of emails a while back, breaking the ice, and I naturally settled down. Yes, there was a Sally Field-like moment there for a minute, but that passed too.
Same thing happened with me and Dan. It's just human nature.
My point is this: that essential transaction is hard to do in the asynchronous, one-upmanship world of the blogosphere, where the faceless crowd is constantly egging you on with "fight! fight! fight!"
And that's why I regulary declare myself off the "bottle" of such web confrontations: they just seem so pointlesss and counterproductive, producing more light than heat.
But you keep getting these emails from the well-intentioned: "So-and-So just slammed you and I was wondering if you were going to slam him back!"
See what I mean? You're right back in high school and some kid just ran the length of the hall to tell you that So-and-So just called you a pussy and this guy wants to know what you're going to do about it.
The reality is, and I find this again and again because--you know what? I often appear on panels with people over time--is that once you actually meet the person and you get a chance to talk about something other than the 'debate," you invariably like them a lot, quickly discover you both believe in many of the same things, and that your differences are tiny. I have found this true in my life so many times I take it as axiomatic nowadays. Best example: Andrew Krepenevich. For years I was told by others how much he disliked my work and then we finally met and he said otherwise. I was thrilled because I looked up to him over the years, and in our subsequent interactions, I quickly realized how much we have in common in our thinking. Inconceviable to some, pretty standard to me.
Sure, occasionally there's the person you just can't stand, but frankly, that's pretty rare.
Again, my point is this: the blogosphere tends to accentuate the silliest forms of debate and engagement while denying you the ice-breakers, which always come--absent F2F--via emails, not posts or comments or third-party emails.
So all I'm saying is--relax on me and this current back and forth with Robb. I like John's stuff a lot. I like arguing with him through the blogosphere. I don't feel threatened by any of it, otherwise I wouldn't have a blog. To me, it's always three-beers in and everyone is smiling, despite the jabs (and yeah, that's fun shit when kept in context). I'm sure I'd like John a lot if I had the chance to meet him, and I'm sure I will someday soon and find that to be the case.
And I'm sure that all the angst caused in this recent exchange can easily be erased by a smile from one of my kids--or completely driven through the roof by the cat peeing on a bed.
As a personal side note: I finally had my double-wide sinus/ear infection diagnosed today. I find that whenever I get myself into some issue with somebody on the web, I'm typically sick or heading that way. Then I get a little antibiotics, wonder what the fuss was about, and move on.
I say (speaking as a former cornerback), it's good to have a short memory.
Reader Comments (7)
As the published author, you have the high ground and can take or leave anything anyone says on a blog.
If what someone says has merit, it may be worth responding to. If what someone says is irritating, it is probably wise to disregard it lest further such antics be encouraged.
Something about the medium leads to less courtesy than face to face verbal encounters, much like email. My custom and practice is to post nothing -- and never click send -- while I am irritated by anything. In virtually every case, I find the thing to do is ... ignore it. The problem solves itself.
The differences between the blogosphere and high school outweigh the similarities. First, you do not have to deal with the jerks. You can ignore them. Second, the population is orders of magnitude bigger, so there are more total smart and interesting people, and you can find them. Third, Gresham's Law need not apply, the bad doees not necessarily crowd out the good, and you can find the reliable people who are worth listening to. Fourth, the actual knowledge base is enormous, and if you have questions about anything there is usually someone who can answer it, or point you to things you would not have found yourself.
So, better than high school. The guy who says, "Dude, he just called you a pussy! You gonna take that?" can be made to go away forever with the click of a mouse. If only it had been that easy in high school.
Tom, I just wanna say that you've put your finger on what's been bugging me about blogs for a long time. Just giving this one a big "I hear that." Lex's comments are sound as well -- generally I'm finding that the best rule is "when in doubt about whether you should hit 'post', don't." You find your foot occupying your mouth a lot less that way, freeing it up for more productive discussion.
occasionally somebody interested in the iraqi question will get thru your blog to the bigger question and that should make it worth posting. Thanks for being candid with us.
I can remember the day that this happened during my masters work. The two people are my thesis advisor and myself. It was a great day. From that day on, I was no longer afraid to make mistakes, and to refine the knowledge I have and grow the research skills I will need in the future, which is the purpose of graduate school.
One more thing, Friedman was on Charlie Rose on 22 May. I thought it was great. One of the best points made by Mr. Friedman was that if Iraq is not done properly, it will turn into another oil state, with death and destruction and persecution following the oil tap closely.
Google Video of the interview
Actually the serious subject blogs serve a good purpose in illuminating issues and policies early in the cycle from creation to implementation (and then probably destruction). Personally, I don't think Tom's vision is at end-state and the blog helps him work his way through to new useful visions. By the way Tom, how many languages have your books been translated into, and is there any evidence of foreign interest in your books or blog? Or are the thoughts expressed on your blog and books hermetically sealed from literate elites elsewhere? I hope not because these issues are crucial to the world's future even if perhaps 25 years out.
There is a very old Interenet cycle. The network is created, a close-knit set of people start using it for communication and life is good. The network expands, and a new wave of people come in and go and ruin everything. They don't understand how to talk, how to abbreviate, how to follow good nettiquette. It's all so infuriating. You get the new guys assimilated and acclimated to the way things are done and a new crop of uneducated newcomers, bigger than the last, comes in and dumps you right back to square one.
You can go all the way back to the 1970s and find this cycle repeated time and again. The blogosphere is just one of the newer/bigger twists on this old story. The good news is that the blogosphere will settle down as more and more settled bloggers get more adept at sorting out the newcomers. The bad news is that there will be a new set of newcomers coming down the pike.
There always is.
B-)
It is messier but still an improvement over the past when comments were not allowed.
Keep up the great work it is a pleasure reading someone smart and genuine.