The Blogosphere as Coffeehouse, continued:

   While the coffeehouse culture focused more on art and literature than on politics (the Viennese papers would run significant sections of original literary works and essays. A prominent fuellitonist could become a celebrity in the city.), that is a difference in the times–politics are more central to our existence now, and in their self-destructive pursuit of avant-garde status, music and art have rendered themselves irrelevant to most people’s lives. And blogs are not solely about politics–you can equally find discussions of the classics, economics, history, religion, cognitive science, drug research, and probably any other topic you can think of.
   
Different coffeehouses would serve different clienteles, and would thus have their own specializations. One might be known as the bohemian haunt, another for dramatists and poets, a third for philosophers, a fourth for politicians and writers. Similarly, the blogosphere has organized, or at least is in the process of organizing itself into nodes, which each cater to a particular interest.

   Blogging has restored the public intellectual sphere that has been lost for most in America. (As was shown by the general irrelevance and obscurity of most of those cited in the recent book about public intellectuals.) It provides the chance for thinkers from all over the country to gather together and exchange thoughts, bounce ideas off each other, and to find out what others are thinking. The Viennese coffeehouses served the same cultural function–blogging is this same phenomenon writ large.

   Both served a relatively small population of self-described elites, but through the quality of minds present and the cross fertilization of ideas nurtured by it, the blogosphere can have an influence out of proportion to its number of readers. But even if it has no effect on society at large, the blogosphere still provides an intellectual home for its denizens, a place to go to hear the latest political developments and to find out what’s going on in the world, in the largest sense.

   Just as the coffeehouses did–they existed and flourished not because of any product they produced or power they had, but because they provided a benefit to those who frequented them. I don’t know if blogging will ever make anyone any money, but I think it will still survive, because people like it. They like doing it, and there is value in it for the participants.

Link posted by Douglas Turnbull: http://beautyofgray.blogspot.com/2002_05_12_beautyofgray_archive.html