What to say about The Amazing Paper Weblog...

Well, I guess, to a certain extent, I agree. Blogging has been around for some time now. It's past it's what's this new craze stage. But I wouldn't be so quick to say it's done. Yes, it may be done in the sense that it's no longer the new trend- like what paperzines and mixtapes used to be. It's "trend-ed" out. Everyone's doing it. But this book was published in '05, and I assume the article was written some time before that. I mean, four years ago, I didn't know much about blogs and, before this article, would have argued that blogging wasn't even around back then. But I can probably blame that on my age, and the fact that I grew up in some farm town in the middle of nowhere. What i'm getting at is that, four years ago I wouldn't have been so quick to argue that blogging was dead. I hadn't even found out that it had existed!
It sounds like the way that Neal, Spiers, and Krucoff and Cage view the weblog is as some secret jewel they all refined and are now mad at the rest of the world who found out about it and spoiled- which is usually the case with everything cool.
A great example of this is when Krucoff and Cage "jokingly" speak of creating a selective blog community in which they control who is allowed to be a part of. How 2nd grade is that?
My argument: Blogging still hasn't reached its fullest potential. There's still much to be done. For example, I know of this class where these students are thinking up ways of bringing the publishing world web-wide.
It's like TV. Gosh, it's been around forever. Well, not really but in relation to Spiers frame of mind it has. And it's still being re-invented: Reality TV, Interactive TV (texting and internet voting), I can't think of anything else and class starts in a half an hour, but there are other examples.
Although I love the idea of a paper weblog, I don't think it had to happen out of some desparate reaction to the death of something wonderful. Yes, everyone has a blog. And now new offshoots of it are being born (Facebook) but that doesn't mean the death of it.
"The blog as a shiny new thing, separate and apart from the rest of media, is dead," says Spiers.
It's just the death of some fashionable trend.
Andi White