HW 14: Joi Ito Transitionrama!

Although Joi Ito uses his blog for many things, he mainly post questions and allows other people to comment to start dialogue. As a result he created a community of bloggers. It is true that Joi blogs for a living, but he refuses to let advertisers influence his blog. In Addition, Joi states “If it means that I have to have a day job to keep my blog the way I want it, then that’s the way I’ll do it.” In other words Joi rather write what he wants to write and not be influence by money just to write what others want him to write.
In comparison of blogs and phones, Joi finds that blogs give people a way to find out information that they would be afraid to find out through phones. For example, Joi speaks about his favorite blog, Reverend Akma’s blog, and left a message on his blog saying, “it’s all you religions tat believe in one god that are doing all the fighting, not like Shinto where we have multiple gods.” This resulted in a phone call of Reverend Akma explaining God to Joi because Reverend Akma was offended to hear this on his blog. Granted that Joi was uncomfortable with picking up the phone to call Reverend Akma, blogs gave Joi the confidence to find out the information he wanted to know.
Ultimately Joi is pro blogging, but he also recognizes the few problems that blogs do cause. For instance, Joi says “One risk for many of us is to delude ourselves into thinking that we are more inclusive than we are…So there is a risk of starting to think you are listening to everyone, even though those involved in your community actually represent only a certain part on the spectrum.” So what Joi means is that we shouldn’t get too involved with blogs because they only represent one idea, instead of a broad variety of people’s ideas.