On the blogs I read, which I read through the excellent bloglines aggregator, there's been quite a bit of talk of the recent exponential growth of blogs, especially from large corporations (and their constituents). One reason I think it’s taken off so strongly is a debate that went on here (warning, this is pretty much as technical a debate as you’ll find): Miguel de Icaza v. Chris Anderson. These are two unbelievably technical guys who are debating the internals of the Avalon architecture but that could have happened previously over email. The beauty of this is that it’s all present for the world to see and that we can all be made smarter by their collective brilliance. In just a few days, I’m 150x smarter about the design decisions and potential problems with a very complex architecture. I’m not sure if that would have been possible with any other technology that didn’t require me buying beers. And as much as I enjoy the occasional snifter of port around Christmas, getting people in two entirely separate locations together (I believe Miguel is in Boston and Chris is in Redmond) just to sit around and educate me is probably not scalable. Very cool!
