Before Xerox commoditized copiers, if one couldn’t afford print shops, one would have to transcribe articles to a mimeograph, with graphics consisting of simple line drawings, and in my experience, hand crank them out page by page. And if you had a mailing list, crank out a set of envelopes. Just to target an audience of 100, it could easily consume a day or two to publish.

Xerox made pictures and schematics possible & less messier, not to mention getting high off the mimeograph ink.

Blogging is truly revolutionary and an equalizer in allowing anyone do 1 to many publishing plus enabling the speed of light feedback loop.

Beyond this you have millions of essentially social blogs, these create tiny “communities” and offer people connections once previously impossible with linking to others of similar types. They multiply by significant (not necessarilly huge) numbers the people participants have access to, this means in the strange patterns of word to mouth things can ripple around much, much faster.

The effect of these things is not obviously dramatic, yet it can be nore fundamental than today’s teapot tempests, an idea dropped in a venture capital blog or discussion group and read by a few hundred may be more important than things read by millions because this is the precise audience that matters in development of technology. Similarly thousands of third world doctors may get access to things not availible or in the less tangible tens of thousands of teenage girls may through loosely interconnected networks be more able to define their “culture” with less influence from mass influences and the ability to find sympathetic companions all over the world, reducing the power of traditional peer pressure.

As for interest in politics, some of the most engaged people I know are my women friends; we talk about political issues all of the time… but as I said, they don’t have time to blog.

I enjoy reading your blog very much. You are doing conservative women a great deed. I have a fairly new blog up and running. I write essays on politics, culture, and society. Please take a moment and check me out. I am looking, of course, for link exchanges.

Best wishes, Dana Lotzgesell

As for the disparity, its a combination of many things, but mostly environment – I think men are more inclined to be adversarial and challenging, and drawn to the political realm.

Hat tip to Malkin for luring me to your site. Its now part of my daily AM read

Sorry for misspelling your name. I was typing too quickly, too late.

I talk a little bit about MBTI type on my phonics page (linked below), mostly how it relates to learning.

Testosterone? Geeky? How can you use those two words in a sentence like that?