Blog Ahead

THE BLOG AHEAD One of the Internet pioneers takes a look at the impact-and future-of the Blog Revolution. Ideas are flashing around the world at light speed, and R. SCOTT HALL, an Internet pioneer from the early days at CompuServe and online entrepreneur, explores and brilliantly illuminates the way blogs are transforming the way human beings connect minds. Bloggers, Hall maintains, are at the forefront of the greatest change in the life of the mind since the Gutenberg press. Individuals with no establishment connections or entrée can connect with millions worldwide, relying solely on the power of their ideas and their prose to get-and influence-an audience that print journalists and authors could only dream of. Communities of interest, unlimited by time and space, are springing into existence: now they are even exerting force on the traditional levers of power. Hall gives a trenchant, often humorous, analysis of this revolution in the human Zeitgeist, ranging from politics, to media, to the arts. Here's some of the fascinating terrain he covers in his analysis of how blogging is reshaping the world of ideas, affecting global public opinion and mass media:  This new form of horizontal communication is examined and compared to its (feeble) predecessors  Blogging runs smack-dab into the Rear Guard, and both sides end up blinking  The remunerated wordsmiths test the new blogging waters for unmined gold  Businesses from the Drucker Era bow down to the great god Gates  The next generation of leaders master the tools they will use  The dank world of geekery meets the high-wattage expectations of aesthetics  The blogosphere auto-assembles-and becomes a powerful force for change Finally, Hall assembles a list of "Axioms of Blogosophy": principles for the first true citizens of the world. This survey of the world of blogs is only a sampling of the wonderful, surprising, and occasionally repulsive experiences that await the undaunted armchair explorer of the blogosphere. -R. Scott Hall