I love the flake factor.
while there are "flakes", and people should alwyas be critical and discerning, I've always been amazed at the number of people here who actually know what the $%@# they are talking about.....hehe.
it's like having a huge family, yes there are kooks and wierdos in the family, but there's also lawyers, doctors, professors, engineers, financial guru's, and little old ladies who know how to solve that nagging problem you have...hehe
usually, some folks in a thread actually know more about the subject on the TV than the pretty face who reads the news, but other folks on the thread know less than you......so buyer beware.
the key to the success of this new media age is that it allows the average citizen to report, verify, and debate the news of the day. unfiltered.
In the last decade we have witnessed the liberation of information.
Many people still don't get it. They still cling to their comfortable dogmas and rituals,...the nightly news, daily papers, etc.
The Silicon Age has passed them by.
They find it inconcievable that a kid in New York can tell her story to the world by clicking a button. Or a kid in Baghdad, Beijing, or Bombay. But it happens every day.
It's pretty profound, really. We've overthrown the priest of knowledge. Now anyone can be a reporter, politician, expert, or participant. It begins here in America, and this is fitting. A revolutionary and individualistic people tend to take to these sorts of things. But we exporting this. Freerepublic is one of many sites in the US. But the concept has caught on around the globe. Today, we can read Iraqi bloggers praise, complain, and argue freely on the net. Soon this will spread across the Middle East. (It's already underway.) Then the Chinese, or anybody with a gripe or opinion can have their say. And there's not a dang thing the Party, The Press, or the established political order can do about it.
The electrons smashing on your screen are modern version of the Gutenberg Bible. As early printing spread knowledge and free thinking, so to will this tempermental infant we call the internet. If you have any doubt about this consider the following:
The electrons you are now reading were typed by a rather average graduate student in Kansas at 11:30 CST 9-13-04. They have since been transmitted and read by a young farmer in Georgia, a small business owner in Ohio, and a widow in Oregon. Maybe even a young dentist in Iraq, an english student in Indonesia, or a soldier in Afghanistan.
And you.
These squiggly lines belong to an archive you can reference later. You can agree, disagree, or ignore. The decision is yours, and that is the key.
Plus I'm not wearing a blue suit, TV make-up and reading a script from a teleprompter.
I'm just an average Joe telling you what I think.