A blog on blogs

Today, at breakfast, at the Richmond diner, where I eat every Sunday, with my wife, who hates overusing commas, I was reading the Burlington Free Press. Not that I would ever pay to read the Free Press but a copy of it was lying on the counter and the comics were on top. (Really, I'm coming to a point soon.) So, after completing the comics, I moved on to other, less informative and less well written, parts of the newspaper. One article reminded me that I hadn't blogged for a while. A young Chinese man, living in China, was suing his internet provider for censoring his blogs. Apparently, it is common practice in China to delete politically controversial Blog entries.

Since this is a technology blog, and not a political one, I will refrain from commenting on the morality of censorship and, instead, will note some of the advantages and disadvantages of using a Blog v.s. traditional printed material as a method of disseminating political opinion.

• Paper
• 
  
• Advantages
• You get to meet people who are interested in your cause (handing out pamphlets)
• Anyone who can read is a potential audience
• Potentially more enduring media
• Hard to completely suppress
• 
  
• Disadvantages
  
• Potential difficulty finding a printer or maintaining your own press
• More limited to localized distribution
• 
  
• Blogging
• 
  
• Advantages
• Easy to create a message (computer access being relatively common)
• Easy to disseminate
  
• Potentially massive audience
• 
  
• Disadvantages
• Your target audience must be computer literate
• Censorship can completely destroy your message
• A little more difficult to be completely anonymous

Anyway, just a note from a Sunday morning diner.

An after-note. That list was supposed to be outline-indented. It showed up fine when I was writing the post but was butchered on display ...