Linkers vs. Thinkers

Several months ago I read on-line an article by someone criticizing modern writers of Web logs, or blogs. The author's assertion was that blogs were first intended to be collections of links to other sites of interest, not sites with substantial content themselves. The author decried the trend of bloggers' using the form to diarize or to write expository essays or to critique social or political events, claiming that on-line diaries clog the blogosphere with irrelevant content and that bloggers' opinion pieces make it difficult for consumers of news to differentiate between laypersons' contributions and the work of legitimate journalists.

I haven't been able to find evidence to substantiate the claim that early blogs were all aggregators. Several sites about the history of blogs, in fact, point to on-line personal journals as early examples of the form (in the first part of the 1990s). In any case, even if blogs once were something more limited than the wide variety of forms and purposes that they represent today, why shouldn't they evolve? It seems that most everything else in life does. And although I can agree that there's plenty of (pardon my French:) crap on the Internet due to the ease of on-line publishing (via free blog services and free or cheap Web site hosting services), wouldn't it be better to educate Netizens (Internet users or cybercitizens) to be more critical readers than to limit their access to things to read, regardless of the quality or type of the blog?

I myself use this blog mostly to diarize for the sake of relatives and friends who don't see us very often but might be interested in the goings on in our lives [and who could share the love a little by at least leaving a comment from time to time to let me know they've visited and read what I've written--ahem!]--although I've been known to be an essayist and critic on this blog from time to time . . . and even an aggregator, assembling lists of links that I recommend my readers check out, if interested. More recently I read on-line about the distinction between "linkers" and "thinkers": bloggers who aggregate and share links to other sites of interest versus bloggers who write their own content for others' consideration. It made me wonder whether I ought to be linking more and thinking less (or linking totally and thinking not at all, to suit the tastes of the writer whom I mentioned at the start).

Here's an example of a blog that both links and thinks: Fimoculous. Rex, the blogger, is an example of a linker, who I happen to know is also a thinker, whose thinking is reflected clearly in his linking. He's an acquaintance of mine from our university student days; we have a mutual friend, Darin, with whom I made a trip to St. Paul several years ago and who made arrangements for the two of us to meet Rex for supper at Moscow on the Hill for a fantastic Russian meal. Rex has a wide variety of interests, and he links to other sites dealing with current events, politics, pop culture, music, technology, literature, fine arts, commerce, and on and on. Keep an eye on his annual list of lists, an über-aggregator of aggregators of links to sites on a wide array of topics.