I posted a question to two projects on H2O:
“1) Weblogs (“blogs”) are frivolous: fun, addictive, cool, but not serious tools for use by academics, lawyers and the like. Blogs will be forgotten in a few years. Moreover, they don’t tell us much about speech in cyberspace. We shouldn’t have included blogs in this study group.
2) I take the mealy-mouthed middle position. Weblogs (“blogs”) are an interesting iteration in the history of the Web and will help us do some things better than we could do before. But blogs are a supernova and will soon fade away. A valid research topic today, and possibly a bit useful, but not long-term.
3) Weblogs (“blogs”) are the future of the Net. Blogs represent a critical step forward in public discourse using the Internet. They represent an amazing opportunity for improving education; understanding of professional information like the law; and a useful extension of freedom of speech on the Net. We should use and study blogs closely.
Please start from proposition 1), 2) or 3) and state your case.”
Here are the replies after round one. Outside of the rotisserie system, Dave Winer says: “Hehehe
Silly question.
Both the middle and extreme-positive views are correct.
Blogs will morph into being everything given enough time.
So they will disappear.
But they will also be everywhere.”
Law professors least like it when people quarrel with the hypothetical — or tell them that they asked a bad question. So it goes. There was a better question in there somewhere.
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