blogosphere.us : A Systems Explanation for the Blogosphere
Posted 10/04/2003 under
research •
Here Nick describes the Blogosphere as a self organising dissipative system. He describes how an information gradient can be said to exist between those who have the information and those who want it and that weblogging allows the bypassing of the traditional ‘information gatekeeper’.
Traditionally, the transfer of information between these “people” would have to flow through an information gatekeeper before it could reach the person who wanted it - an analogous process to “conducting” the information from source to receiver. However, as the information gradient between individuals strengthens, that “base” system for transferring information reaches its full potential. If the information gradient continues to strengthen, some sort of dissipative structure has to emerge from the surrounding information environment to more efficiently deal with the differences. The Blogosphere can be thought of as a dissipative system for dealing with a strong information gradient. Instead of being conducted from first hand source to gatekeeper to audience, information in the Blogosphere is capable of traveling directly from the source to the audience - eliminating the limiting factor in the information transfer.