Sorry about the light -- ok, complete lack -- of blogging the last week. But we're through the tunnel, and in a few days I'll be able to tell you all about it. It's good news! Blogging will remain ... sporadic ... for a few more days, though: I'll be at a convention, doing the wall-to-wall meeting thing.  Including Saturday and Sunday. Sigh.

Meanwhile, a few things to think about:

My (and James Jennings) new patent.  It's about as tedious as you'd expect.

A new study showing  that 70 percent of blog readers -- that's you! -- are influentials.

To put the blogosphere's influentials density in context, consider that the WashingtonPost.com likes to brag that 34% of its readers are influentials. (See bottom of page 4 on this PDF.)

Which brings me to one of the very many things that have piled up while I've been off doing ... stuff, Which Will Be Revealed Ever So Soon: Apparently, I'm teaching a class on blogging next semester on blogging at IUPUI for Dean James "I'm the Dean, Not The GodFather Of Soul" Brown.  And I have to put together a textbook/reading list by next month.

I have a couple of thoughts here.  First, almost everything about the mass media is inappropriate.  Blogs are not measured in terms of tonnage, or the number that they reach; they work in terms of who they reach, and how that reach spreads through those people's secondary and tertiary networks.

So I'm thinking of three books: One I'm pretty certain on.  One I'm thinking on, but could turn fickle at any moment.  And I fear I have a plethora of candidates for the third, and am having trouble deciding.  Here they are:

I'm pretty certain I want to use Gladwell's The Tipping Point. Beyond the titular discussion, there is a series of theories about the types of people who spread information -- people who are experts in a narrow area, people who are experts on what people are experts on which topics, and so forth.  I think that as the blogosphere matures many of these same patterns will emerge.

The second book is Stephenson's The Diamond Age. This has a fascinating discussion of information flow, with the lowest classes getting totally personalized news, and the 100 most important people in government receiving a newspaper printed on a hand-cranked letter press to ensure their having a common view of the world. But I'm not sure if that is worth the whole book, or if it is just one discussion.

Finally, I generally assign a Melissa Scott book to any new media class because Melissa is that good and because ... well, just because.  I'm thinking of assigning Trouble and her friends, because it's a great book, and because of the discussion of the malleability of identity online.  In the past, I've almost always assigned  Night Sky Mine, because it is good, and beautiful, and has the most unengineering discussion of user interfaces I've ever encountered. (Note to self: make programmers read this; add it to their project plans.)

Then, of course, there is  The Jazz.  This is from the Amazon review:

Misinformation, PR, disinformation, rumors, spinning, lies--in the near future, the art of untruth has evolved into the jazz: virtual-reality Internet theatre, an entertainment for the cognoscenti and a source of pain and scandal for those who believe what they see, read, or experience. Tin Lizzy has escaped her troubled criminal adolescence to become one of the premiere design programmers of the jazz. But when she agrees to design the back-tech for a teenage boy's brilliant jazz scenario, she discovers too late that Keyz created his jazz with a sophisticated program stolen from a Hollywood studio. Now Lizzy is a criminal again, a desperate fugitive on the run with Keyz through the dangerous underground of the 21st century, fleeing cops, bounty hunters, studio detectives, and a powerful, ruthless CEO who has a secret to preserve, and boundless resources and vindictiveness.

So, here are my thoughts for the moment:

Maybe 3 is too small a number! But, of course, given the amount of writing and such that I'll require ...

Maybe some thoughts/comments will come my way from you, gentle readers!

Maybe I should add Melissa to the blog mailing list? Hmmm, why haven't I done that already? All the rest of the Friends of Feola are being regularly tortured ... Maybe Melissa will have a suggestion!

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cjf