August 4, 2008
Did you see the recent New York Times Magazine article on “trolls” on the Internet?
It was very interesting. I’m kinda afraid to comment more lest this blog becomes a target. Half joking here.
See this quote:
“Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed.”
But the most comforting quote in the article
So far, despite all this discord, the Internet’s system of civil machines has proved more resilient than anyone imagined. As early as 1994, the head of the Internet Society warned that spam “will destroy the network.” The news media continually present the online world as a Wild West infested with villainous hackers, spammers and pedophiles. And yet the Internet is doing very well for a frontier town on the brink of anarchy. Its traffic is expected to quadruple by 2012. To say that trolls pose a threat to the Internet at this point is like saying that crows pose a threat to farming.
What’s interesting is that trolls rely mostly on text-based communication and it makes me wonder how they would interact with image or video-based media. Just a thought…
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Blogging, internet culture | Tagged: Internet, trolls | 
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Posted by Will Coley
April 7, 2008
Did you see this article about blogging becoming the new sweatshop industry? Funny, it was printed only a week after I started a blog… Perhaps I should have thought this out more. Actually in the nonprofit advocacy world, the pressures are somewhat different. That said, the rapid pace of internet news traffic is a concern for all of us.
In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop
SAN FRANCISCO — They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
[Photo: Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times. Matt Buchanan shows blogs may be a young man’s game.]
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.
Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Read the rest of the article HERE
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Blogging | Tagged: Blogging, Internet, Society, Technology, Trends | 
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Posted by Will Coley
