That wasn't supposed to be the lead for this column. I was planning to work up a piece on the significance of the next incarnation of Microsoft's Windows operating system (Note to editor: Let's move that one down the page.)
This week's bigger news is that Raed is still alive.
For those who have not closely followed the story, Raed is the handle of a Baghdad blogger whose daily updates from Iraq's capital turned him into something of a cult Internet figure. Months' worth of Raed's dispatches, variously marked by mordant humour and detailed insight, make for a fascinating chronicle of how ordinary people dealt with the most extraordinary of circumstances.
Then, just as the bombing began in mid-March, Raed went dark. The speculation ran the gamut of possibilities, always circling around to the likelihood that his dead body was lying crushed under a pile of rubble.
Happily, the worst he suffered was a power outage that temporarily cut off his connection to the Internet. Now that he's back to blogging, I've again bookmarked his blog as part of my must-read Web sites in the a.m.
That a "nobody" like Raed wound up providing a more nuanced view of his world--better than either the authoritarian inanities of the Iraqi information minister or the Geraldo-besotted dispatches of the US commercial television networks--testifies both to the specific value of Weblogging as well as to the broader impact the Internet may yet have around the world.
Watching the growth of blogging the past couple of years, we've reached the point where it's no longer cause for comment when chief executives such as Mitch Kapor, Ray Ozzie or would-be presidential candidates such as Gary Hart operate their own Weblogs.
What will be the Internet's impact on global culture? The answer remains unclear. From a historical point of view, the technology is in its infant stage and the story line could finish up in any number of ways. Still, there are tantalising clues.
On his Weblog, Dave Winer recently noted the decentralising impact of the Internet on what he describes as the "monoculture". In this sense, the Internet becomes a revolutionary tool changing the cost of distributing culture to the point where it has become virtually free. "Every day we're asked to pay a price to continue the existing centralised system of flowing information and creativity," writes Winer. "What if we don't want to pay?"
It's a provocative and perceptive question that goes straight to the bigger point: the global distribution of information, which creates news and culture, is no longer an exclusive monopoly. For the interests that have traditionally acted as information gatekeepers, this is bad news in bells. We don't have to pay, and there are only going to be more alternatives as the rest of the world gets wired.
