Article: The Power Of Contribution

[John Bonnes]

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php?r=2493-The-Power-Of-Contributon

[goulik]

Great article, Thanks John!

[Squirrel]

I concur. Lots to think about in that. Thanks!

[Jim Crikket]

"an ocean of dreck, dotted sporadically by islands of genius."

 

How could you not have adopted that as the official Twins Daily tagline yet?

[Rosterman]

You learn to write by reading. You learn to think be reading different opinions and then trying to place your own into words. It's the fingers that often screw up on the keyboard.

[PseudoSABR]

The internet allows for a much more organic flow of ideas from the margins to the center. In the past media was so much more finite, there were only pages to print, minutes of programming to air, and only so much consumers were willing to pay for such media, and the notion that people would produce such media for free was reserved only for the most cultish and proselytizing among us. That the internet has made it cheap and easy to produce ones own media, allows for non-guaranteed money-making, good ideas to make their way from message board to blog to larger media and so on. In the past, only those articles (tv programs, books) that were thought to appeal to unchanging generic audience would be published. Now, group-think need not diminish what becomes centered and promoted. And more there's sustainable communities for whatever interest any two humans can share made possible by internet's vast reach.

 

Honestly, it's no wonder baseball's embrace of sabermetrics and the growing legitimacy of internet media goes hand and hand. Unpopular ideas that challenge the status quo can more quickly topple traditional forms of thinking due to fluidity and breadth of the internet.

 

People are probably reading more than ever, as it's far more efficient to communicate in writing than it is by voice (much less video). We're getting more analytical too, as we learn to fish through pages of words for the information we seek and find pleasurable.

[nicksaviking]

Great stuff and hard to argue against. Anyone who posts regularly can probably think of times when just before hitting "submit" they deleted a seemingly great post after realizing the thought wasn't nearly as coherent or logical upon proof reading. Or maybe it's just me.

 

Still trying to decide if this part advocating blogs (which are often believed to be crass compared to print media) is intentional or not:

 

"I’d argue that the cognitive shift in going from an audience of zero (talking to yourself) to an audience of 10 (a few friends or random strangers checking out your online post) is so big that it’s actually huger than going from 10 people to a million."

 

Ha, huger?! Has our casual vocabulary finally made that word acceptable but I was not notified?

 

[Jim Crikket]

Great stuff and hard to argue against. Anyone who posts regularly can probably think of times when just before hitting "submit" they deleted a seemingly great post after realizing the thought wasn't nearly as coherent or logical upon proof reading. Or maybe it's just me.

 

Still trying to decide if this part advocating blogs (which are often believed to be crass compared to print media) is intentional or not:

 

"I’d argue that the cognitive shift in going from an audience of zero (talking to yourself) to an audience of 10 (a few friends or random strangers checking out your online post) is so big that it’s actually huger than going from 10 people to a million."

 

Ha, huger?! Has our casual vocabulary finally made that word acceptable but I was not notified?

 

 

I thought the same thing when I read "huger." I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cringe.

 

Then he won me back over a paragraph later with "vertiginous."