Web 2.0, Blogging, and the Future of the Text

I've been in a funk for the better part of a year now trying to figure out what blogging means. I'm not stupid, I got the idea pretty quickly, but I was having trouble with the whole philosophical implications of automatic (push button, if you will-and now a word from our sponsor) publishing. Sites like Lulu and Blurb make actually publishing the old fashioned way pretty easy, but this whole instant gratification phenomenon has really tied me in knots.

At least metaphorically.

I mean I enjoy the fact that I can pour out the flotsam and jetsam of my mind at a moment's notice. I like that I can pontificate to the empty hall...it makes me feel better. But aside from the therapeutic effects of blogging, I guess I wonder about the democratization of publishing. If blogs are like opinions, or other, less savory anatomical areas, i.e we all have them, then do we end up devaluing the text? Are we all being watered down with this Web 2.0 business? And if we are, then where is the value in the text? I guess I'm canonical enough to still value a group of documents that somehow are the benchmarks of, say, Western Literature (although the same argument can be made for texts about gardening, or voyeurism, or cooking- I wonder if there is the canonical text on erotic yo-yo's? I have a friend who could possibly contribute!).

There is no answer, of course, just the ongoing dialogue. We all keep writing, like me, and maybe diluting the pool even more. Or will the definitive literary statement on the 21st century spring from the pages of Blogger, or Wordpress, or, perish the thought, Myspace? Anyway, the following video by Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State University, takes a stab at what Web 2.0 really means. It's pretty thought-provoking.