Last week I attended a lecture by Scott Rosenberg about his new book, “Say Everything.”

"Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters" (Scott Rosenberg)

While I have not read the book, I was a little disappointed with the lecture. His history of the technology was interesting but he missed what I consider to be the most important aspect of blogging.

Throughout history, information has been restricted. Imagine an upside-down funnel. The small end represents a small set of individuals and groups that decide what everyone else hears about. The big end is everyone else. That is pretty much how it has always been. The means of reaching large groups has been controlled by small groups, whether it was the printing press or Television.

Some groups publish information because they make money from it. Some groups want to maintain political control or power and they publish information for that purpose. Whatever the motivation, there is always a small group that controls what gets published and what the large groups ever hear about.

Blogging is about inverting that funnel and it completely disrupts the historical model of information control. Blogging is about self-publishing.

If I have something to say, I no longer need to get someone else to share it for me. I don’t need to get their approval or permission. I don’t even need to tell them about it.

The Internet and information technology has lowered the bar to publishing and that is rapidly destroying the ability of small groups to control information.

In this country, that has meant a lot of websites about what people ate for lunch or what their cat did today. Stuff that would never be published in traditional media but can be self-published. This country is politically open and mostly concerned with entertainment. However there are also blogs about company and government behavior that have brought misbehavior to the attention of others.

In other countries, blogging is attacking political control of information. What is daily life really like in Iraq or Palestine or China? Blogs are going to give you a personal and possibly more accurate view of issues than any newspaper or government-run media bureau ever will.

The impact of self publishing is enormous and still evolving. That's the real story.