My confirmation bias - 2007 column by Nicolas Carr - here:
Are bloggers parasites? That's the question of the day in the navel-gazing world of the blogosphere. Robert Niles, the editor of the Online Journalism Review, recently decried what he sees as a tendency by journalists to characterise blogs as "a 'parasitic' medium" that feeds off the work of traditional newspapers and magazines. He calls the charge "a poorly informed insult of many hard-working Web publishers who are doing fresh, informative and original work".
Are bloggers parasites? That's the question of the day in the navel-gazing world of the blogosphere. Robert Niles, the editor of the Online Journalism Review, recently decried what he sees as a tendency by journalists to characterise blogs as "a 'parasitic' medium" that feeds off the work of traditional newspapers and magazines. He calls the charge "a poorly informed insult of many hard-working Web publishers who are doing fresh, informative and original work".
Johnson goes on to draw an analogy between these human waste-recyclers and their microscopic counterparts, bacteria. "Without the bacteria-driven processes of decomposition, the Earth would have been overrun by offal and carcasses eons ago," he reminds us. "If the bacteria disappeared overnight, all life on the planet would be extinguished within a matter of years." Bloggers do similarly useful work. In fact, the blogosphere may best be thought of as a vast digestive tract, breaking down the news of the day into ever finer particles of meaning (and ever more concentrated toxins).
It's worth remembering that, in a literary context, another word for "parasitic" is "critical". Blogging is, at its essence, a critical form, a means of recycling other writings to ensure that every molecule of sense, whether real or imagined, is distilled and consumed.
So if someone wants to call my blog parasitic, or even bacterial, that's fine with me. I'll consider it not an insult, but a compliment.
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