Knots Intertwingled

Sam Ruby’s entry Knot Theory really gets at the essence of what he finds interesting. And I’m right there in my own taste and interests. I’ve always admired his “intertwingly” address, though I believe it comes from Ted Nelson’s quote:

“Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged, people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can’t. Everything is deeply intertwingled.”

Though I agree with Ted Nelson so far as it goes as a theory of reality, I start to disagree with it as a design stance. The resolution is not to make things only hierarchical, categorized, or sequential, but rather to decide when and where to arrange them in these ways. Therein is the art of placement and composing of systems.

Technorati tracks 3 million blogs

1. On July 6, 2004, Technorati tracked its 3 millionth weblog.
2. 15,000 new weblogs each average weekday, one somewhere in the world every 5.8 seconds.
3. 45% of the weblogs tracked have not had a post in over 3 months 
4. over 275,000 individual posts every day, thus 3 blogs are updated every second.

Sifry comments were essentially the same that he made in a panel at the AlwaysOn Innovation Summit this last week

One of the things that drives me personally is that weblogs are turning us all into producers, creators, and participants in our society, not just consumers. ... A Forrester Research report asked Internet users which activities they were spending less time doing in order to spend time at their computers. 78% of the people polled said that they gave up television viewing. A study from The Georgia Institute of Technology's Graphic, Visualization and Usability Center showed a clear shift in media habits with more than one third of respondents saying that they "use the Web instead of watching TV on a daily basis."

Now for my Independence Day message: We're connecting with each other, we're talking to each other, finding people of similar interests, and we're having conversations. My dear hope is that this is the beginning of a rebirth of civics in America. Much in the same way that email revived the lost art of letter writing, Blogs are reviving the lost art of civilized civic dialogue - of argument, of well reasoned thought and response. And 3 million people (heck, even if you only assume that it is only 1.65 Million people, given the current abandonment rate) participating in worldwide civic discourse puts hope into my heart.