The list is life... the life of our info-society, anyway

AlwaysOn and Technorati have named their Open Media 100, a list of the bloggers and other online pioneers who are changing the way we as a society get our news, how we as a society approach the idea of what it means to be informed.

It doesn’t matter who’s on the list (though it is an interesting group; check it out). What matters is that the list exists, that an aggressively independent rabble of geeks and Xers -- much of the Open Media 100, I’d guess, would qualify as both -- is mad as hell and not taking it anymore... and that this rabble is making enough of a dent in The Establishment to get noticed.

As with all else having to do with life, the universe, and everything, this is but a new iteration in a never-ending cycle -- bloggers are, as many others have pointed out, nothing but modern-day pamphleteers, like Thomas Paine and the writers of the Federalist papers, who were anonymous at the time. And while there’s been lots of debate and consternation over the political activism of a certain segment -- perhaps the most popular segment -- of the blogosphere, it’s worth nothing that not all of the Open Media 100 are politically motivated, except in the sense that they might be said to be anti-corporate media. Like the "bloggers" of the Revolutionary era, those of us speaking up online do so out of a sense that there are wrongs to be righted, balances to be restored, and unheard voices clamoring to be heard.

Xers have been living in "interesting times," in the Chinese sense of the phrase, all our lives. The need for bloggers and independent journalists, and the niche we’ve been able carve for ourselves, suggests that times are probably about to get a whole lot more interesting.