The well-reviewed contrarian blog "The amorality of Web 2.0" by Nicholas Carr, you can see by clicking on the title above, is thought provoking. The missing dimension in this stimulating debate in my view is elites and access to "Salons" of the intelligentsia. An important architect of Wikipedia agrees with Carr in the first link below it, citing the random Wikipedia search, which gives mostly sketchy stubs (stub- mere ideas for items) but also asserts its superb quality in selected articles. Intellectual elites from Lao Tzu and Ecclesiastes onwards largely ignore and decry the quality of 90-99% of what is written, asserted, and believed by the throng in favour of a saving remnant's luminous thoughts and dreams, So the pessimistic view of an inevitable decline in quality of "journalism" , in its literal meaning of the daily scribblings of individuals, and the advocates like TIm O'Reilly of a Web 2.0 renaissance, can be reconciled to a degree in that the web has and will allow a shortcut to bright isolated passionate individuals around the globe to at least a taste of the intellectual back and forth that might have taken years before or never happened, just as public libraries, free lecture series, television , the printing press and cofee houses have done in the past. Thus the curious and passionate will seek and find quality intellectual nourishment and avenues for self-expression, in spite of the overall prosaic noise levels.
At the same time, some may get lost in the forest of banal background noise. Try hitting "next blog" above a few times for a random tour of blogs. Last time I did it, it seemed to be a preponderance of literate, exhausted grad students wondering if it is worth it , the time before that, depressing Aussie and Brit drunken weekend descriptions:>
