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Are Blogging and Unemployment Related?
Posted by
chrisd
on Sat Dec 21, 2002 08:58 PM
from the bloggers-blogging-about-bloggers-blogging dept.
from the bloggers-blogging-about-bloggers-blogging dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "The Washington Post is really nice with bloggers. Yesterday, it carried an article named "Free Speech -- Virtually," or "Legal Constraints on Web Journals Surprise Many 'Bloggers'". Today, Cynthia L. Webb focuses on an hypothesis from Chris Gulker, which he exposed in a column published by The Independent, "The View from Silicon Valley: Bloggers come in from the cold." As said Chris Gulker, "Many of us are Webloggers 'bloggers' for short. It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between the meteoric rise of blogging, the practice of keeping a frequently-updated online journal, and the rise of unemployment in Silicon Valley and other tech corridors. Check this column for a summary or the original article for more details."
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bah (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:bah (Score:5, Insightful)
I always get a kick out of seeing this kind of comment on Slashdot. It makes me wonder what the poster thinks a weblog is... because by most definitions, Slashdot is one.
Yeah, it's now a multiple-author weblog with a very well-established comment system, both traits somewhat unusual, but it's a weblog. Many people use Slash to run more traditional weblogs.
Does your post count as part of the "too much attention" paid to it?
Parent
Re:bah (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally prefer to waste my time posting my news/opinion/commentary to Slashdot, but who cares, the point is all about the democratization of opinion sharing the web allows. The more interesting the content you produce is, the more likely people will read it. Again, the large multiuser forums like
Re:bah (Score:3, Insightful)
I always get a kick out of seeing this kind of comment on Slashdot. It makes me wonder what the poster thinks a weblog is... because by most definitions, Slashdot is one.
I disagree. It's far more like USENET than a blog. The discussion here isn't focused and driven by one primary author, something that most weblogs share. Responsibility for material and topics is not as decentralized as USENET (most of which has no structure), but it far less centralized than a particular person's blog.
/. isn't as big as USENET, but it's not as small as a blog.
Re:bah (Score:3, Interesting)
Take "IM" or "PM" for instance. Instant or Private Messages have been made popular by AOL, MSN, and YAHOO. ICQ was more popular than any of these services, though, and it was just calling them "Online Messages". Don't believe me? Install an old version of ICQ and try to send a message. The Window will say SEND ONLINE MESSAGE.
I remember back in the old multiline BBS days (when I ran a 10 line BBS, that is) the software I was running refered to "Instant Messages" as "Online Messages" or "OLM"s for short. (Cnet Amiga Pro was the software, for those interested). Now days if you say "I'll O.L.M you later" to someone they just give you this blank stare. In my circle of friends, though, OLM is the term we used from 1990 till about 1998 so "IM" is still kind of new to us. Old habits, and all that.
My point is, terminology comes and goes. So while I may not like new terms, I accept that they will be coined. What bothers me more than new terms that are annoying is when people take well established terms and misuse them. Esspecially annoying are people who are under some serious misconceptions about something or another, or idiots trying to sound like they know more than they do. There are a lot of both types going around and it bothers me to no end.
Re:bah (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you kidding??! Do you realize how coveted correspondence, diaries, personal logs and photo albums are from 50 years ago? 100 years ago? 300 years ago?!
We are changing the way history will be written. We are creating an army of primary sources, the people who don't write about history - they are history. In 100 years, people will be able to formulate insights about our lives, not based on their conjecture, their agenda, and a few scraps of preserved-information (probably from the ruling , literate classes); but based on the daily records of hundreds of thousands of people from many walks of life.
Weblogs are democratizing history. Or open-sourcing it, if you prefer. And right now the history that's being preserved is by-and-large that of the geek elite that always runs ahead of the general public curve. But ten years from now, weblogging will be as ubiquitous to the average American as the Internet is today. Give the rest of the world time, and they'll catch up with us. You won't get everyone's story, but you'll get many of them. Too many of them to conveniently gloss over the unpopular truths of our time. Will anyone in the future ever be able to write that our country united with a single voice behind the humanitarian, populist, environmentally-sound policies of the Bush Administration? Not as long as there are archives of the weblogs that are being written today.
I see weblogging as the most interesting thing to come out of this whole Internet experiment. Err, I mean, the most interesting thing after slashdot. [slashdot.org] =)
Professional Trollenizing (Score:2, Funny)
In other words, Chris Gulker is a professional troller.
Well, duh (Score:5, Interesting)
There are certainly counterexamples. I know some folks who find it therapeutic, so they make time to blog. For them, it's a journal that they can selectively share. However, I have certainly witnessed this correlation among my friends.
Re:Well, duh (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Well, duh (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder what relationship blogging while employed has to impending unemployment. . .
Parent
Blogging will cost you a job (Score:4, Funny)
"I'm an avid blogger in my spare time"
*slap* *slam*
Re:Blogging will cost you a job (Score:3, Informative)
i know at least one writer that got a job *because* she was able to demonstrate her skills and attract a large amounts of traffic.
she turned that job into a very lucrative career, as well as a book.
Re:Blogging will cost you a job (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the fault of the mainstream media (Score:3, Informative)
Or am i the only one that gets the impression that the web looked much more interessting and much less boring 2 to 5 years ago?
Right. (Score:2)
The weblogging phenomenon is an outpouring of talentless hacks putting up shitty websites to jump on the Interweb bandwagon.
Re:It's the fault of the mainstream media (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you really remember the web 5 years ago?
Let me refresh your memory:
"This site designed for Netscape" links
Animated mailto link gifs of a letter going into an envelope
"Under Construction"
"Do you like my new high contrast background image??? It is the same color as my text!!"
"Here is the current weather"
Javascript popup: What is your name? Hi $name!
Frames.... need I say more?
Here are all the meaningless awards this site has gotten. (Slashdot is still guilty of this one!)
500K index.html with anchors instead of using multiple pages
More animated gifs than characters of text
No google
--
The list goes on... my point is, the web is better today than it has ever been in history. There is more information than ever, the pages are designed much more cleanly and usably, etc.
Parent
I really don't think so ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Off the top of my head, the bloggers I can think of are (and you can probably figure out who some of them are): law professor, free-lance journalist (lots of these for obvious reasons), retired software engineer, university professor, graduate student, medical resident, military technician, political cartoonist
Bloggers come from all walks of life; some have certainly come from the tech field, but the explosion of blogging has come from people who are talented writers and have something interesting to say, but who haven't been part of the mainstream media.
When are people going to stop doing this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When are people going to stop doing this? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Really? Tell the Post, they might publish it!
As was hammered into our heads in Bio 1, "correlation does not prove causation." Repeat 100 times. Remember it when reading The Bell Curve. Now if only the rest of the world would do the same.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:2, Offtopic)
The problem came when journalist and many other people read the correlation numbers and assumed it proved something. They complained constantly and many people took it to be gospel.
In fact the final conclusion of the bell curve was an increased emphasis on education. That a high level of education for people of lower intelligence had a great impact, just don't force the smarter kids to learn at thier pace - and I agree totally.
The other part is that genetics plays a large part of maximum intelligence. Thier quote was basically that had newton grown up in the rain forest he probably would have not invented calculus, but he would still have been smart. Don't force avarage children to take AP calsses and don't force brilliant children to take fundamental (that's what the lowest "hardness" classes were called when I was in school), Which also makes sense - maximise what each level is able to learn, don't force the kids (if an average intelligence can work hard enough to pass an ap course let them). All in all I think that is a reasonable thing, much better than what I experience in school (in order to "boost" thier self esteem they made certain kids go into a higher class than they could actually do, they learned nothing and they slowed the rest of the class considerably).
And finally my thoughts on it are most people have no problem with every other physical aspect being ruled by genetics, why is your innate intelligence the only one not? intellegence != education and that is important to remember, as above, put a below average person in an AP class and they are still below average, but an above average in a fundamental class and they are still above average. An above average that lives in the mountains of tennessee (as I have several family members who do) without electricity and no school : they are not educated, take a below average intelligence person in the cities of tennessee and put them through high school and they will have a lot higer level of education (will no more "things"). I never really found that too drastic of a thought and fairly obvious, but I know some people who that idea just enrages.
Re:IQ testing (Score:2)
Everyone should make up their minds for themselves, to the degree their genetics permit, but bear in mind that the books conclusions are far from received wisdom. Keep a close eye on the book's use of statistics and remember the inherent limitations of intelligence testing with its fixation on one number to characterize each of us. Efforts to do so in the past have failed spectacularly. It his quite a leap to go from the shaky assumption that intelligence can be quantified to thinking we know how to design society around it.
For the interested, I happened across this site [mugu.com] which had gone to impressive lengths to collect commentary, pro and con, on The Bell Curve. One of the most critical, and entertaining to read, is the late Gould, also of Harvard.
Oddly enough, the late co-author Herrnstein was my Psych 1 professor. Seemed like a nice guy.
Re:When are people going to stop doing this? (Score:2)
Actually, they are vaguely related - you've just stumbled onto one of Moore's numerous lesser known laws - that the number of anti-smoking ads kids are exposed to will double every election year.
Um... what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm in Ohio. I have a web journal. (No, you may not have the address.) I am not employed; I
None of which has anything to do with why I journal. I write there to avoid ranting to my friends, to talk about local news and personal happenings and all that junk. A few people I know read it periodically. I mostly just use it to vent.
I do not live or work in Silicon Valley. I never have. I hope to god I never will. (I'm *not* a coder or sysem administrator or any of that. Not by any stretch of the imagination.) I'm not alone in this. The first people I knew with LiveJournals were high-school aged girls. (Actually, most of them started out at Diaryland. LJ is marginally better.)
Among 'serious' bloggers, the ones I read are the ones who comment on politics and current events. Most of them, I suspect, are also not former tech-field workers.
So unless we're correlating these things like the correlation between sunspot activity and skirt length--thank you, Mr. Heinlein--I don't see how they're getting this information. There's certainly no *causation* involved, that I can see.
From The "Duh" Department (Score:2, Interesting)
I hope that made sense. =p
The medium is irrelevent. (Score:5, Insightful)
>One woman, a Web designer who asked that her name not be used, said she lost her job because of what she wrote on her Web log.
Emphasis on what she wrote, not Web log.
The Web is one way to publish information, be it through a homepage, an article, a comment in a discussion, or a blog. Books are another, flyers are another etc. If this woman displayed sensitive information (thereby breaching a contract), she has to pay the price regardless of whether it was in a blog or anything else.
There is nothing special or untouchable about a blog, and there is no reason to write an article explaining that although some people think that their blogs are anonymous, they can be tracked down. This is the same with a dozen other mediums.
Despite the unwarranted focus on web logs, this article does deal with some issues of freedom of speech, perhaps that's what this /. discussion should mostly be about.
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I can just feel the -1's already...
Breaking news... (Score:5, Funny)
Blogging? Whatever. (Score:4, Funny)
I am supposed to be working right now.
Damn you /., Damn you straight to hell!
'webloggers' for long (Score:4, Funny)
Be patriotic! Only Terrorist and techies blog! (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the best way to discredit somebody? With slander/libel/rumors.
While it's true that there are a lot of bloggers out of work, there isn't really a lot of alternatives for us pasty ass geeks that just wanna make boxes do neat things.
A buddy of mine just got an 18k enlistment bonus, he's 35, tow truck driver. He's gonna drive gasonline tankers for the army. He had a skill they wanted. Nevermind the fact that he's 6'2" 260lbs.
I went down to the recruitment office and told the recruiting officer "Hey I got 7 years experience as a sysadmin, I can build networks, I can set up servers, i'm really good at fixing things! I'm only 29 to boot!"
He just sort of looked at me like I was in the wrong place. After finding out the army could only use me as either cannon fodder, latrine digger, or a cook, without a bonus, I figured I didn't really have a future there.
Going on to John Ashcrofts Homeland Security Guard courses, I just looked at those people in their silly "I wanna be a cop" costumes and snickered.
Sorry washington post, but it seems all the USA wants right now is cops, security officers and army personal. You say that bloggers are jobless, well fuck, what other options are we cut out for then???
Most of the people I know in my field are not bullies, and do not enjoy placing control on other people. We're just not cut out for that kind of work mentally or physically, and WP want's to talk trash about us?
Whats next? Are you going to say those people in the special olympics are slow?
Heh.
The white house is filled with the idiot son of an idiot. Why do I have this mental picture of GWB looking for the "any key"
Will Weaton (Score:2, Interesting)
Unemployment and /. posts related? (Score:2)
In personal experience... (Score:3, Insightful)
When I became unemployed (not ever getting stuff to QA because Sales won't let Engineering finish anything tends to do this), I blogged even more. When I became employed again, I still blogged (and do to this day), but I didn't blog as much as I used to, since I 1) don't have time, 2) don't have as much wandering in my mind because I'm focused, and 3) don't have as much anger to rant off in a blog. Thus, I don't blog as much as I used to.
I still do occasionally, though, and it is a good way to collect one's thoughts, and straighten one's self out a bit if one is a bit confused.
me (Score:2)
: )
Blogging gets people jobs too... (Score:3, Funny)
I seem to recall a few logic problems when I was in college that sounded an awful lot like the thinking in this article. Not that you have to take a logic class to be a reporter these days I suppose...
There is no relation... (Score:5, Interesting)
So why is blogging popular? I think it's the latest "not it your face" communication. First was snail mail, then came the phone, then e-mail, and IM. Whenever I communicate with you using one of those methods, I assume that *you* must be interested. But the problem is, how do I know if you are interested about a particular topic that I may want to rant about? I could just spam you with every idea in my head... or I can start a blog. A blog is an extremely passive communication system. If you are interested, just come on back and read my rants. If you are not interested, just don't come back.
Unemployment will come and go. And blogging? Well... the time for blogging has just come. It's the next step.
Quality over Quantity (Score:2, Interesting)
mutual admiration society (Score:5, Insightful)
If blogging is to live up to the hype its being built up to be it will need to get over itself and create institutions for critical peer review. Its pretty clear that the current ones like
Are blogging and homelessness related? (Score:2)
The Big Picture (Score:2, Funny)
Wow! More startling news. (Score:3, Funny)
I was scared to hear this one. (Score:4, Interesting)
They ended up hiring me anyway, but it was really strange to be on that kind of unequal footing.
Correlations v. Causal Relationship (Score:2, Insightful)
Call me grumpy, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I also wonder: who bothers to read the babble of all these bloggers? Who has the time, or the lack of discrimination required, to give bloggers any attention? I look at
It sometimes seems to me that we live in a society that communicates both too little and too much. It's a matter of quality, in other words, and that involves taste and discrimination. My limited contact with some very clever people on the net has led me to constuct a (very unfair and inaccurate) stereotype: a hacker, and especially a young hacker, is remarkably skilled in a narrow, arcane field, and almost totally ignorant outside it. The older ones who have already had a decent education and a real life don't fit the stereotype very well. Yes, I know that's not always true, but...hackers have left me feeling that I am dealing with people who utterly lack the information that should be conveyed in a solid liberal education. We are living on different planets, and our fundamental assumptions and core information do not mesh well at all. So...if (I said "if"!)most blogs are constructed by narrowly informed and partially-formed people, the reasons for reading blogs must be few indeed.
Yes, all of the above means that I would be unlikely to read my own comment, and very unlikely to believe it. -- Happy holidays to everyone anyway. Grumble, grumble....
I don't think so ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I run blogs4God.com [blogs4god.com] - a portal of almost 500 bloggers - as well as a blog itself. There are no more or less unemployed from that segment than there are in my neighborhood.
Sounds a bit contrived - but whatta I know?
A possible explanation. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously. It's not something to complain about, it's the unwritten rule: you have to play well with others. Most people, if they have to choose between promoting (or keeping) one of two equally qualified people, will keep the person they feel most comfortable and at ease with.
This is also true when people are asked to recommend others. You don't think about the guy in the cubicle next to you who only talks to you when he wants to show off something he downloaded or wrote, you think about the girl across from you who always asks how you're doing, shows you the new piercing she just got, and hopefully invites you to her next party. Sure, he may actually be a better coder or better at fixing customer issues, but that girl's pretty friendly...
There are books on "Networking Essentials." But the ones in the career section of the bookstore are as useful as the ones in the computer section, know what I mean?
Is 80k in donations really unemployed? (Score:3, Insightful)
What about blogs run by authors of books, or people running little companies, churches, and other entities using the blog format to get their information out w/out having to <html> and FTP their brains out?
I want to see some hard numbers before I believe there is a correlation.
political blogs and E/N (Score:3, Interesting)
E/N stood for Everything and Nothing, a "timewaster" page about silly news articles, bizarre Flash movies from Japan, and other amusing stuff the author finds on the web, plus commentary and rants that put them in context. badassmofo.com [badassmofo.com] is a good example, as he's a tech worker who has time to kill scrounging the 'Net. His page used to be considered E/N a few years back, but now would be thought of as a blog.
Article NOT titled "Blogging causes Unemployment" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:importance of education (Score:2)
What's with all of the funny posts tonight? Did a lot of people get their hands on some good weed or something? If so, why wasn't I invited?