What does this image say to you?
Is it a flowering of creative connectedness or a nasty internet knot? It is supposed to suggest that by all of us coming to one place (The Guardian’s Comment Is Free) we can turn lots of different views in to a meaningful conversation. Very much what Tim O’Reilly was hoping for with his new code for online civility. I spoke to Tim as part of a radio discussion last night and what surprised me was his desire for order. It all felt distinctly “Old media”. I already think you can control most things on blogs through moderation. He seems to want even more of the good-old-fashioned subjective editorial control that I used to exercise as a TV news editor. As I have discussed elsewhere on this blog, I have nothing against self-regulation – there’s no alternative on the web apart from massive censorship – but when I look at that image I am afraid I see as much an image of confusion or collision as I see a happy creative flowering. Perhaps I am taking the power of the net and blogs too much for granted? or perhaps Tim O’Reilly is. Either way we are all going to need help untangling our mouses if the Guardian’s vision is anything to go by…