IN the spring of 1712, the British essayist Joseph Addison rambled from pub to parlor seeking the pulse of his countrymen regarding rumors (false, it turned out) that the king of France, Louis XIV, had died. The St. James coffeehouse, Addison reported in The Spectator, was "in a Buzz of Politics." In the 18th century, "buzz" was part of what social theorists called the emerging - and powerful - bourgeois public sphere. In the 21st century, the buzz is in the blogosphere. Or at least, that's the popular mythology. As a result of their influence in incidents like the "60...
