Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters Review

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(More customer reviews)Great book -- It reads like a novel, and contrary to most "business" books it is very well written. Writing present or quasi-present history is a difficult genre and any author will always be suspected of lacking the distance necessary to separate out the wheat from the chaff especially, especially in a world where everybody craves for celebrity status. Scott Rosenberg largely and skillfully avoids this pitfall.
Over the last 25 years, digital technologies have empowered people a little bit more each time, but blogging has brought a new type empowerment, not simply the ability to do more things better and faster, but to say and share things differently. The three main sections of the book describe the progressive expansion of the art of blogging from pioneering individuals to the build-up of the massive blogosphere that has reshaped our connection to what's happening around us and to the news media altogether. The book is a gold mine of information -- and helps better understand the foundations of today's social media.

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Blogs are everywhere. They have exposed truths and spread rumors. Made and lost fortunes. Brought couples together and torn them apart. Toppled cabinet members and sparked grassroots movements. Immediate, intimate, and influential, they have put the power of personal publishing into everyone's hands. Regularly dismissed as trivial and ephemeral, they have proved that they are here to stay.In Say Everything, Scott Rosenberg chronicles blogging's unplanned rise and improbable triumph, tracing its impact on politics, business, the media, and our personal lives. He offers close-ups of innovators such as Blogger founder Evan Williams, investigative journalist Josh Marshall, exhibitionist diarist Justin Hall, software visionary Dave Winer, "mommyblogger" Heather Armstrong, and many others. These blogging pioneers were the first to face new dilemmas that have become common in the era of Google and Facebook, and their stories offer vital insights and warnings as we navigate the future. How much of our lives should we reveal on the Web? Is anonymity a boon or a curse? Which voices can we trust? What does authenticity look like on a stage where millions are fighting for attention, yet most only write for a handful? And what happens to our culture now that everyone can say everything?Before blogs, it was easy to believe that the Web would grow up to be a clickable TV–slick, passive, mass-market. Instead, blogging brought the Web's native character into focus–convivial, expressive, democratic. Far from being pajama-clad loners, bloggers have become the curators of our collective experience, testing out their ideas in front of a crowd and linking people in ways that broadcasts can't match. Blogs have created a new kind of public sphere–one in which we can think out loud together. And now that we have begun, Rosenberg writes, it is impossible to imagine us stopping.In his first book, Dreaming in Code, Scott Rosenberg brilliantly explored the art of creating software ("the first true successor to The Soul of a New Machine," wrote James Fallows in The Atlantic). In Say Everything, Rosenberg brings the same perceptive eye to the blogosphere, capturing as no one else has the birth of a new medium.From the Hardcover edition.

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