[Sigia-l] Technology fads and blogs

[Manu Sharma]

prai at prady.com wrote:
| How easy it is to get carried away with technology's cheap tricks. Infact,
| the whole internet is synonym of blogging. It was so easy to publish
| anything on the internet that it possesses new problems to people who seek
| information. New technology is like fashion and so ugly it is that every
| year we have to change it with something new. The new thing with all those
| who can type on the internet is to 'blog'.

I agree that hype, media frenzy; vested interests; our inherent weakness for
readymade off-the-shelf solutions and the inevitable bandwagon effect after
early adoption often lead to technology fads that propose an expensive solution
to a non-existent or the wrong problem when the same investment can provide
better returns if done wisely. We have witnessed numerous discussions here and
elsewhere on the web on such technological and management panacea[1].

But is blog a technology fad? There's little evidence for it. While it is true
that technology may have eradicated entry barriers by enabling quick and easy
publishing, it doesn't quite explain the widespread acceptance and popularity of
blogs.

Technology fads usually originate in and are promoted by consulting firms or a
new best-selling book that propose to solve difficult problems. They then gain
wide-spread acceptance percolating down to individual players in an industry.
Blogs, on the other hand are a *bottom-up* phenomenon. Blogging already is quite
widespread and a fast emerging practice. It is only now that "corporatisation"
of blogs has begun.

The fairly recent practice of selling "blog-as-a-commodity" to solve a company's
internal communication problems may or may not lead to a cycle of a new fad in
which we first witness its widespread adoption and then the ensuing
disappointment that the fad hasn't delivered. But there really isn't any truth
in the statement that the blog phenomenon we've witnessed so far is a fad.

There are many factors that may have lead to the success of blogs but the
discussion may be outside the scope of this list. I've perhaps already gone
pretty much off-topic.

Manu
IndiaCHI blog: http://indiachi.blogspot.com

[1] There's even a term for it. Fad surfing (n): the practice of riding the
crest of the latest management panacea and then paddling out again just in time
to ride the next one; always absorbing for managers and lucrative for
consultants; frequently disastrous for organisations.