There's been a bit of a debate in the aussie blogs over the last couple of weeks on - "bloggers as public intellectuals" - triggered mainly, I think, by the number of little snippets in the media we've had lately - Radio National feature spots, etc.

I posted my own view (on 17 November) - in summary - that blogging is one outlet but seems to reach a limited audience as far as I can tell (although I'm constantly surprised by the people who mention to me - usually in person - that 'I read your blog and....'; Sauer-Thompson here, Ken Parish here.

I just wanted to note that the Yale Law School (and yes, I am an alumni, but that's not the reason I'm mentioning it) just had a conference on blogging - called "Revenge of the Blogs". I suspect this event occurred is chiefly through the efforts there of people like Ernie Miller - the force and energy behind Lawmeme, a great site that collects stuff on law and technology. People interested in this debate might find some of the posts on conference sessions interesting - basically there's a whole lot by bloggers saying what they think is important about what they do.

I think the most interesting thing that comes from my reading of the discussions is the issue of trust - ie that you build trust by being there, by blogging "right", by being both interesting, and accurate. This strikes a chord - having had a bit of a hiatus recently when work took over my life, I know people noticed and I probably lost a few readers. I've been struck by the responses to my recent re-entry on the blogging scene - emails from a few people who have noticed have been much appreciated and highlight that sometimes, people actually notice what you are doing.

On this point of trust, it really is one of those themes that keeps coming back online isn't it? The question of how you build it, what you do to earn trust, and, obvioulsy, just how much work it is to build that trust. And trust, too, brings us back to questions that I've blogged on before - things like - anonymity online, and the effect of recent events on trust. The recent issues of terrorism (and gee, isn't that story in the Herald on Saturday (News Review) on "living with fear" interesting - and deeply disturbing in what it says about a society that has been touched by fear) highlight one thing for me that Helen Nissenbaum has discussed in a really interesting piece (note - pdf doct) on trust - that is, that people place undue emphasis on full identification as a basis for trust (btw - when searching for Nissenbaum's piece online I also came across this site that collects a few more pieces.)

Nissenbaum's argument is basically - identity is a false substitute for trust. The predicate of much public policy - about online issues, and also offline - in the wake of terrorism issues is that identity means trust - that is, if we can't be anonymous then we can be more trusting. Frankly, and following Nissenbaum of course, that must be a very limited and disturbing approach. The fact is that we can't trust people just because we can identify them. Trust comes from all sorts of things other than identity - knowledge over time, seeing things in context etc etc. So making everything identified and identifiable doesn't actually build trust or a true basis for trust. And it has the serious drawbacks of making people feel monitored, which is a serious interference with autonomy (see Julie Cohen's interesting writing on information and autonomy - "Information Rights and Intellectual Freedom" (pdf doct)).