Chewing the sealskin
There's no doubt that something important is happening on the Internet again. For those of us lucky enough to be directly involved from the beginning, I'm sure it feels very familiar. My history on the net only goes back to 1996 but that's how it looks to me. Iteration, getting it a little bit more right each time, rising like a spiral from the ground into the air. feels good, but what is it?

I'm calling it chewing(TM ) in the way that Inuit soften and prepare a sealskin for working by sharing the chewing around the edges first. Something similar is going on with Blogs and it has almost nothing to do with online journals, egotism, public venting and guts-spilling.

The combination of Blogs, Trackback, RSS feeds and aggregators and meta-aggregators, Blogdex, Blogroll, Technorati cosmos and the fact that Google has bought Blogger indicates that something exciting is going on. We are moving towards an isometric information network that creates value at the ends and then feeds it back into itself, where information competes for attention by making itself available through as many channels as possible, and people like Awasu and FM Radio and others are building the tools that we will need to do this stuff.

This meme is taking off. Damn i wish LJ had Trackback enabled. Anyone know how to do that? Anyway get this

Not only do the stories in my blog describe my road of discovery through listening, but following the dialogue that often results from these stories is a journey of discovery as well, and appeals to the feeling of wonder I had as a 3 yr old when confronted with the world.

Dialogue in the blogosphere is somewhat hidden from the casual
observer, especially if this observer is used to e-mail or forums. Responses to my posts seldom come in the form of comments as added to the original posts. Comments usually deal with short messages (Great post!), or impromptu responses that the commenter does not deem appropiate to blog about himself.

Because that is where I'll find the reactions to my posts: in other blogs.
And I have to discover these responses for myself.
A whole range of tools helps me do that, my visitor statistics keep track of which sites refer to me, likewise tools like Technorati, Blogdex and the like. That's how I find where I'm quoted. Also my newsaggregator keeps track of blogs I find of interest, and, as I will explain when talking about relationships in the blogosphere, the blogs I find of interest are often the ones that respond to my blog as well. But this is all invisible on my blog!

Chewing!