Reflections on Barlow, the Public Sphere and eggs.

Throughout this semester, in my English class, “Blogging, E-Text and Me” we have discussed the theories of several philosophers.  One of who is Aaron Barlow.  In his book, “Blogging America”, Barlow discusses the public sphere, a free forum within society, where ideas formulate, meaning is negotiated and expression is unlimited.   In the excerpt that we read, he traces the progression and regression of the public sphere.  How it was completely free and wild, without limitations and then its regression, when large companies owned printing presses, and not individuals.  To the period of time, when media polluted the public sphere and fed us most of what we know, when we did not have the option of choosing what we ate.  He discusses how with blogs, we are reclaiming the public sphere.  Blogs are free, anyone can create it, anyone can earn validation with self-publication, and set free whatever ideas they choose.  Blogs are not limited; the information that enters the blogging world is not censored, or controlled by any media outlets.  It is a continuous, constantly changing negotiated conversation.  A conversation that has no end, and whose vastness I cannot conceive. 

My first home eggsperiment of the year!

After learning about the public sphere, I realized how necessary and intertwined the idea is in our society, for any society for that matter.  In order to find some sort of understood truth in any matter, it’s essential to have ideas clash.  And if the public sphere did not exist, if our right to freedom of speech did not exist, our ideas could not collide, swallow each other and spit out new ones.  Where would we be without good, rowdy arguments?  I don’t mean meaningless arguments amongst too highly opinionated people.  But I mean where would we be if opinions have not battled each other.  There is no known truth waiting to be discovered that overrides all other opinions.  It doesn’t exist.  We have been thrown into this world, into this society knowing nothing.  We learn from each other, from history.  We begin to learn when we enter the ongoing stream of consciousness, the ongoing discussion amongst people that has no end. We can no nothing until our ideas are challenged, and until we are proven wrong.  With that realization and acceptance of being wrong, comes the reward of the ability to see the world in a different way, through the opinions of others.  The world of blogging is not as much a new phenomenon as it is the repossession of the public sphere by the public.  We are able to publish anything that we produce through blogs, which has the potential to lead to more crap.  However it is also we the readers who decide which blogs get our attention that is the only filter, we are the ones filtering out the crap.  For too long, the public sphere was out of the public’s control, we were forced to be passive observers.  But with blogging, we can let free our ideas, and see if they sink, swim or go unnoticed in the world of blogging.  But the main thing is that they are there and that they will remain there.