From a short article in the journal Society by Jeremy Freese:
Blogs are distinct from their predecessors for the pervasiveness of quotation and the extent to which authors keep your attention by continually directing it elsewhere. If one thinks in terms of the services that public intellectuals contribute—new ideas, means of making sense of the events of our times, moral conscience—than the important question is whether the new model of decentralized collaboration provides these services better than a model in which a few erudite individuals are identified as the souls of the age.
The answer is yes.
Permutations 
agreed
Yes and No.
i find it interesting that this part of the discussion is couched within the frame of “…the services that public intellectuals contribut[ing]…” – in part because i would rarely think of any of the social science linked blog reading/writing/commenting that i’ve done as being “public sociology” oriented at all.* For me, the interest in blogging in the academic foci (to adopt Scott Feld’s use of the term) is virtually the same as it has been in others. It’s primarily been about making the knowledge production/interpretation/translation/etc. more interactive and less linear.
As such, the distinction made in the first half of the snippet here** actually makes as much sense for “my” approach as for the one i think Jeremy is arguing for.
*Though, i suppose it’s definitely possible that i don’t actually disagree with the assumption, just that i need to alter my definition of “public intellectual” instead.
**And, as i recall in the general theme of that article, though it’s been a while since i read it closely.
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