The Advance of the Common Voice: The Effect of Blogging on the World and Future

Before there were the media moguls. Fat cats dressed in suits portraying themselves as humans as the rest of the world for better or for worse lapped up happily what their various editors and journalists had to say. This, from the perspective of the moguls, would have been the end and the only cornerstone to the information selling market. The newspaper was first, but then came radios, which these men and women easily bought up and insured that only their information would be told. The television came, but mainly as a tool already in the hands of the now-multimillionaire information merchants in the world. Thus its effects were few and far between, *mostly* toting the line that the moguls wanted toted. However, the 1970s harkoned an age of innovation where an obscure but unprecedented technology had been born, with the potential to outdo all other media in terms of information dissemination. This technology would one day be called "the internet".

The moguls at first did not understand the internet's nuances and thus did not consider it a threat to their monopolized trade. This however could be considered their great mistake of the century in time when they had been thus far incorrigible. The internet has made its stake in the information market, effortlessly, and has since become the largest bane to the modern world today. Where in the past devastating secrets were locked away hidden in obscure places, it now takes under an hour to type it out and scan the damning evidence onto the internet into blogs, forums and journals. Creating an all-to-real fait accompli that the suit wearing moguls would have been wise to foresee. They have struck back with large, expensive media websites, like CNN or BBC, but compared to the Common Voice, they are whispers in a sea of raging storms.

Some blogs that have been encountered, give useful information on details the mainstream media suspiciously forgets. Others are very common, and give updates on certain media tidbits (current memes are Obama, Iran and Israel), and others are more technical and to do with the real world, such as motor blogs, blogs on sports and others.

Another useful blogging tool is called "Twitter" - a useful "mini-blog" that many people have found to be a use, and many others have found it to be useless. The main issues the author has with Twitter is its giving out personal user information to third parties to fund its growing base. Also, like Facebook and MySpace, Twitter is plagued by too much user information being available to others, giving vice to cyber-stalking and the likes. However, Twitter has been found extremely useful for some businesses, as it is so popular and thus used as a means to advertise. Also, the ability for users to put Twitter on their cellular phones has greatly multiplied its usage and assured its place for many years to come.

Given Twitter's issues and selling of user information, the author would probably rate it below common and mainstream blogging.

~The Guardian