Tuesday 10 April 2007

How Blogs May Increase Human Intelligence

After reading Rand Fishkin and Andy McBeal this week I am inspired by the reasons why people blog. As ever, curious by the meaning and impact of the Internet on the human race, I pondered how blogs may have increased human intelligence and came up with five factors: consciousness, knowledge, truth, taste and sociality.

Consciousness
Writing and reading is a powerful force for breathing life into humanity. By reducing our thoughts to letter, sharing our dispatches in a way that invites criticism, and reading and commenting in others people’s blogs, we elevate our consciousness in three ways:
  • Becoming acutely aware of other peoples intelligence
  • Being open to broad criticism while maintaining individual identity
  • Expanding our minds and thoughts to infinite possibilities
Knowledge
Blogs are about researching, thinking, compiling, formatting, and publishing knowledge. The process itself requires a great deal of learning and knowledge in order to be successful. Countless tasks are required by Bloggers, all the way from thinking about subject matter, to moderating comments, reviewing statistics, and being able to place links and ads on pages.

People who read blogs do so for entertainment, learning, interacting and networking. A greater way to share knowledge is through social blogging, a fundamental cornerstone of which is, openness to criticism and additional commenting.

Truth
Blogs worth reading seek the truth no matter the niche. Truth is central to the development of human intelligence. Without truth there is no knowledge. Every generation surpasses the next with more knowledge ever spiraling upward in seek of the truth of Everything.

Taste
Chris Anderson coined the phrase “We are the new creators of taste”. What he meant was that because of the new abundance of choices brought about by the Internet we now spend a great deal of time recommending, reviewing, commenting, filtering and voting on content in order to expose the good stuff. Great blogs, with a measure of traffic, are what we collectively think is tasteful. Openness to experience develops taste and character which are attributes of human intellect.

Sociality
Blogs encourage sociality more than any other medium. By default they invite commenting and criticism. The Blogshpere is a virtual friend’s marketplace where people create relationships for sociality, fun, crowd voting, corroboration, and casual chat. This interactive behaviour makes people smarter by causing them to think more about what they are saying, and planning activities like their next post.

Human intelligence could have only been brought about through social behaviour. Try live in a world all by yourself. The human race is a team. Without each other we cannot exist. Together we create infinite intelligence by sharing knowledge through social mechanics. Investing in relationship building is a smart thing to do. With a network of friends you have untold leverage at your disposal.

Do you think blogging makes us smarter?

That’s what I have to say.
Here’s what 6 others are saying.
Rand Fishkin
Andy McBeal
Bud Caddell
Chris Rothwell
Ciarán
Michael Arrington

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks. Nice enlightening rant.
Blogging definately makes us smarter. We get to pick what's important to us and learn more every day.

Ciarán said...

Thanks for the plug Stephen - I really can't imagine that I would ever make a good argument for the blogging makes you clever cause....

Blogging makes your eyes hurt maybe..

Ciarán said...

See - I can't even spell Steven right - feel free to delete both of these!

Franz said...

This is a good wrap-up, though I'd like to add: if anyone does ANYTHING intellectually challenging they will first preserve and over time increase their intelligence. However, if one forces onself to indulge in a hobby "because the doctor said so" it is not getting them very far - you have to be INTERESTED in it. And since a blog is like "your baby" and since 8like ham radio operators, by the way) you can get responses from all over the world and see the topics you posted from different angles (i.e. through the eyes of those who comment), you NECESSARILY widen your horizon - and isn't that what intelligence is all about?

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blog make us think, every time we come up new ideas to write on. which increase our understand.

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A great post describing ways in which how a one can go in and increase his intelligence..... Well done keep posting stuff like this....

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מיטות שיזוף said...

Thanks, vey informative.

Hussam said...

Well i knew blogs were the best way to increase information, but intelligence is far more a different question.... Are you sure about this.... ?

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Julia said...

Good quality blogs with valuable content can only help people increase their intelligence.

I've learned so many thing by only reading some blog posts I've found interesting. What i like about a post is to have pros and cons about something because this way I can let my brains work and figure out if something is good or bad using the information provided by a blogger.


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blogs usually gets their information from the internet and all sorts of media, so no wonder that most bloggers would base their blog or research from the media thus, what we call, intelligence.

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