HW 14: Blogs Creating Communites Around The World

ALTHOUGH IT IS TRUE that communities are formed from people that we know in person, online blogs are creating communities with virtually anyone in the world. AS A RESULT, many new discoveries are occurring across the globe on the Internet to connect people that would other wise never understand or know about some other person's ideas and beliefs. ACTUALLY, Joi Ito, a popular Japanese blogger, had an experience on his blog that was quite amazing. SO, Ito reveals in his interview in David Kline and Dan Burstein's Blog! novel that he had written a blog post to a reverend from Chicago, Reverend Akma, "I wrote a very flippant post about God...he (the reverend) was so offended and he wrote this own his blog. So I called him and said, "So explain this God thing to me"....I would have never have had this opportunity to call up a reverend and have them explain God to me, and he would probably never have gotten a call from somebody in Japan asking to explain God to him, if it weren't for the fact that we stumbled upon each other on blogs" (Kline and Burnstein 149). ULTIMATELY, this story of a Japanese man and a Chicago reverend, shows that the global division of misunderstandings can be eliminated by the blogs from around by the world.
HOWEVER, blogging is also changing the face of other aspects of communities like the music industry for small groups like folk that are overshadowed by larger music giants such as rock or pop. IT IS TRUE, Ito believes that "we are in a period now where we are in a very constrained, narrow, mass communication method-television, radio, newspapers-where you try to tune the whole world into a very narrow band, where you have big stars like Michael Jackson...how can a hundred million people like the same song? It's very difficult if you think about the fact that we are quite culturally diverse" (Kline and Burnstein 145). THAT IS, less popular music types that have been overlooked due to the mass productions of larger musicians, have a better chance of being successful with the support of blogs. FURTHERMORE, blogs are developing a larger spectrum of diversity of music which will in turn open up people's eyes to so many different types of music that they may not have listened to if it were not for blogs.