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Ethan Zuckerman, one of the co-founders of Global Voices [Disclosure: Ethan is a good friend, and I am on a GV board] asks whether the Net is letting us hear voices unlike our own. He founded GV precisely so we could easily find bloggers in other nations opening up a window into their world. But now he wonders if that was “a phenomenon for a specific moment in time.” As the communities of bloggers have become available in many cultures where previously there had been only a handful, they are talking amongst themselves. “[T]hese conversations are taking place in a public medium, but I’m not part of their intended audience,” Ethan writes.

I am not arguing that bridge blogs are dying out – though there’s evidence that some, like Sandmonkey in Egypt, are – or that they’ve lost importance. My point is that when you’re one of the few people in your real world community who is online, the tendency is for you to address your thoughts to a global audience. When a larger segment of your real-world community comes online, there’s good reasons for you to start talking to that audience using the Internet, a global medium used for a local purpose.

Ethan seems wistful for a time when you could fool yourself into believing (as he says) that “a knowledge of English and a little curiosity was all you needed to explore the world of blogs.” Now it takes much more — Global Voices relies on over a hundred people putting in serious time and effort. He contrasts this with the pronouncements of the “cyberutopians” that the Net would make us all one people, engaged with one another and at peace.

But we need to ask whether they saw the Internet bringing people together into a single, unitary net culture, or whether they saw that the Internet could be a space that allowed people from all different cultures to meet on common ground. The former is a fun club to belong to, where we can trade All Your Base jokes and cat macros. But the latter is powerful, political, and potentially transformative. It’s something worth fighting for.

Indeed.

The global conversation isn’t all-to-all, for the reasons Ethan cites. For one thing, the fact that no one speaks every language means that all-to-all is impossible until we discover Babel fish. The Net is not going to erase all culture. Who would want it to? We don’t need homogeneity to be at peace. We need to live with difference.

For that, we don’t need everyone talking with everyone else. But we do need more people talking with more other people. We need to hear some voices, not all voices. We need Global Voices, plus many more global voices. [Tags: ethan_zuckerman globalVoices ]

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Yahoo has posted the video of my hour discussion with Bradley Horowitz about Everything is Miscellaneous. It’s also available as an iPod compatible form. [Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous yahoo bradley_horowitz]

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Terry Heaton reviews Everything is Miscellaneous very favorably, especially in light of Terry’s interests in the media industry.

Kermit Snelson writes about it in terms of identity and power.

Dave Rogers talks about it based ( he says) on reading a few sentences in a book store. He doesn’t like it. [Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous]

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The Data Mining blog maps the blogosphere into some very pretty shapes… (Thanks, Betsy, for the link.) [Tags: blogosphere maps everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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I’ve been blogging lightly – and even missed a day — because the book tour I’m on has been overwhelming. Not only is my schedule packed, but the events have been over stimulating. So many great questions. I get back to the hotel, my head a-swirl…and then I fall asleep.

I come home this weekend for our daughter’s graduation, and then turn around right again and come back to SF.

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Last night the cashier at the movie theater asked me if I wanted the senior discount. That starts at 60. I’m 56, so it’s a reasonable question, but it means that the gap between how old I look and how old I think I look is widening faster than I’m aging. [Tags: aging seniors self_delusion damn_boomers]

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I really enjoyed the bloggers “Everything Is Miscellaneous” get-together last night. Since everyone there already had a copy of the book — we gave them away — I said I would tell them the non-marketing explanation of what the book is about: …

More at EverythingIsMiscellaneous.com...

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JP Rangaswami elaborates on “Filter on the way out” (one of the principles in the book). (My comments)

Tom Matrullo writes beautifully about whether my book points to a change of any real significance. (My comments)

Electronic Museum appreciates and expands on some of Cory Doctorow’s ideas in the Miscellaneous Podcast interview I did with him.

Frank Paynter is enthusiastic while at the same time finding lots to disagree with.(My comments)

Weblogg-ed wishes there were more in it about education. (My comments) [Tags: tom_matrullo everything_is_miscellaneous frank_paynte jp_rangaswami electronic museum weblogg-ed]

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The next in the Miscellaneous Podcast interview series is up at Wired.com. I talk with Markos Moulitsas Zúniga — you know him as Kos of DailyKos, of course/. How does the site manage to be both mass and intimate? And does the structure that allows that imply a politics?

(The series is sponsored by Wired and the Berkman Center.) [Tags: markos kos dailykos politics wired berkman everything_is_miscellaneous]

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