Howard Rheingold considers the weblogs revolution as important as the print revolution
Thank you, Howard, for having received me yesterday in your inspiring office close to Sausalito.
Usually when I find a book great I try to meet the author, this time I met you before I read your book and with such an inspiring discussion I cannot wait to read it.
Here are some of the topics we discussed, poorly writen as I was more focused on what we were talking than taking notes.
The blogging revolution is as important as the print revolution. Suddenly everybody has a voice and blogging enables litterate people to express themselves in written language, publish their thoughts. Even the simplest ones are important, Howard insisted on the 15 years old yound people, as for them blogging is already very natural. Blogging turns them away from TV and from being passive in front of the media, passive listeners, viewers or readers.
They become the medium themselves.
"it is what happens with my book, Smart Mobs, it is very addictive. I do not write for unkown readers anymore, they are here, they interact with me and even more important, they continue writing about Smart Mobs in a a totally new way, on our blog Smart Mobs. We write it together."
"they are right there with me. It is so addictive."
Their written thoughts stay, are accessible and indexed by search engines, enables them to build virtual communities.
"the users create the medium. Innovation becomes orders of magnitude greater".
More important it enables collective actions to happen in a way they could not happen before.
We talked briefly about Howard Dean's campaign, continuing a discussion I had with Doc Searls in the morning (I will blog it soon too).
Here is my understanding of the story, please forgive me for not understanding very well recent US politics, I will work on it. Please correct me if anything is wrong.
Howard Dean heads a very small State in the United States and got enormous popularity from his blog. He has been the very first in the US politics history to become a candidate in a totally new way. The blogging way. Thanks to his blog, he raised today $35 million from hundreds of thousands of people with an average donation of $80. This has never been seen before. Thanks to Meet Up, more than 140 000 meetings to support his campaign have been organized. Again totally unseen before, nothing to do with the vip dinners at x1000$ a seat usually organized to support campaigns. Thousands of people help him and daily comment his campaign on his blog.
Howard says "TV became the #1 politics medium in the 60s with Kennedy. If Howard Dean wins this election, the web will become the #1 medium for politics"
Howard is making great efforts to understand the future and explain it. "I want to see the user revolution not die" and continue their "next social revolution".
I feel I really should introduce blogging to some european politic leaders as an emergency. I will work on it as soon as I return.
Howard, thank you so much for helping us understand our future. Thank you for your time and I will help you as much as I can to get your thoughts understood in Europe and people joining the "next social revolution".
NB. Some people in Europe already asked me if it was true Howard had great painted shoes. I guarantee they are incredible and will probably start painting mine soon too ;=)
NB2. About phones that have digital cameras. Howard says "how come phone builders released these phones without a button that blogs the pictures immediately ? It is like building a standard camera without films ! So f...g simple !" I am sure they will listen to you, Howard.
Howard Rheingold considers the weblogs revolution as important as the print revolution
