blogwise

when i first started blogging in september 2007 – thanks to joel who wouldn’t stop telling me i should and who managed to patiently guide li’l ol’ me long-distance through the internet – i had been surfing seriously for a year, mostly for news and opinion, local and foreign, the better to understand, have a sense, of what’s really going on ba here and abroad.

all that googling of course led me to the pinoy blogosphere, the political blogs in particular, and i thought it was great, the freedom of expression, the freewheeling exchange of ideas, and the option of every reader to comment and be published in the blink of an eye. instant gratification, what joy all around. i could see myself thoroughly enjoying it, puwedeng pag-trip-an, ‘ika nga. my concern was, i would be taking away from time spent finishing two book projects na gumagalaw naman pero ubod nang bagal.

well. as it turns out, i’m managing to blog AND to continue writing one of the books. better yet, the blogging is good exercise, which must be why the book is really moving now, slowly but surely, the writing almost easy. best of all, blogging keeps me sharp, keeps my braincells alive as i try to take in and make sense of diverse schools, and levels, of thought, from the wonderfully sublime to the really really arrogant and really really crass.

but i wouldn’t go so far as to proclaim the internet and blogs as the new media. “a new media,” perhaps. it is hardly a threat to mainstream media, considering that access to the internet is limited to a small educated-and-wired sector of our mostly poor population. newspapers and magazines and radio and television reach a more diverse public, which is as it should be.