If Blogging Makes Us Smarter....

...they're going to need more Nobel Prizes. As sympathetic as I am to Isaac Mao's views on blogging in China, there's a progressive fallacy in the idea that advancing communications technology necessarily engenders healthy developments.

Update: MacKinnon offers some caution as well:

People here find it annoying that the Western media keeps framing the Chinese internet story within the question of whether the internet will or won’t bring down the communist party. The real story is about the cultural and social implications of the semantic web as it continues to spread among China’s fast-growing pool of internet users. In the very long run, cultural and social change may have political implications, but to people here any attempt to speculate on that is counter-productive.

I have my doubts about the whole"web 2.0" thing, as well as about MacKinnon's romanticization of Chinese culture, but a healthy dose of presentism would do most technology and China watchers some good.

But if you listen closely to the"still, small voices" you just might learn something.

You might learn something about Pearl Harbor, and the growing sense that something bad was going to happen. Of course, that assumes, as the commenters (including myself) point out, that the opening of hostilities was a bad thing: Roosevelt's administration wanted to get into the war -- the European Theater, at least -- and were pretty sure that they'd finally pushed the Japanese over the limit.

You might learn that the"nucular" pronunciation actually has a a distinguished lineage and might be more political than cultural. Also that"dig a hole in the ground" isn't as dumb as it sounds.

You might learn that the two leading candidates for the position of Japanese Prime Minister after the expiration of Koizumi's term, ABE Shinzō and ASO Tarō are both descendants of former Prime Ministers and other powerful figures, making them the kind of"heirs apparent" that make me wonder whether we need to start talking about aristocracies and how they are recreated in democratic societies. (and that the Foreign Minister, the most powerful woman in Japanese politics, also the scion of a political family, doesn't think much of our President)

You might learn about the connections (warning: intense sarcasm ahead) between poverty and the Paris Riots, and between guillotines and graffitti.

If Blogger/Blogspot ever comes back online, you could read a serious takedown of Victor Davis Hanson. And, if blogger comes back, you might hear (in advance, even) about a C-Span panel discussion on Hollywood Communists, though I think the first question the panelists (who seem to be a mix of film critics and conservative historians) need to answer is how Communism could be a"threat" to Hollywood, which is already pretty heavily unionized.... That one comes from my old student, Grant Jones who's moved his blogging operation and now allows readers (at least those registered with the currently non-functional Blogger) to comment on his mix of politics and military history.

And, though it's not a blog or a small voice by any stretch of the imagination, you could learn about the renaissance in streaking and in short-form porn and racism created by new digital technologies. And the book reviews at the Times has had some interesting -- contradictory, of course -- connections between history and our current troubles, including a counterfactual discussion of invading Hitler in 1938 and a shoutout to Harvard historians and Marc Bloch.