The Democratization of Knowledge

We here at The Bow and Grimace have long held the idea that the internet will bring about an era not unlike that off the Enlightenment in 18th century England. Would even argue that the same Enlightenment is still unravelling and that the internet is just the next stage, a further democritization of information.

One major example of this is in the facility of blogging. Very much like the pamphleteers of the time -- Defoe, Swift, Paine, and, of course, our namesake Addison -- we believe that blogs will be a leveling mechanism in the discussions of world progression. It is, of course, information that is most dangerous to those who want to control. Information is the worst enemy of dictators and tyrrants, and thus the facilitation of its diffusion will be their end. Sure, there are examples where certain repressive governments have been effective at continuing to surpress information (e.g. China), but even in those cases this control has become progressively more strenuous.

This is the core of our cautious optomism regarding globalization.

That said, we're still not comfortable with the name blog. That's why we're not a blog, we're a journal. Our reason? Well, we don't really have one, other than it seems trite or melodramatic to say that something called a "blog" could change the world on a large scale. We'd rather clench our fists and hold our heads high as we proclaim for all corners of the world, "The repressed will learn, the confined will have an audience of millions, and the poor will be compensated," and we'd preder to do this without using the word blog, since it just makes the whole thing sound like humanity itself will crush dictatorships with pluff mud or rotten tree bark.

In light of this and the fact that we're currently revamping The B&G, we've started to provide links to "journals" from different regions around the world. We're still working on this, so don't be surprised when you see there's a whole continent missing.

We've also added blogs that are specifically about globalization. This is essentially the "new" focus of The B&G. We'd like to present perspectives of globalization that are either latent or reticent in current reporting or is completely neglected in all reporting.

Without further ado, the new links are to the right. Knock yourself out. Test us, we dare you.

Technorati tags: society, Democracy, globalization, blogs