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.
Posted by Michael Bishop 
Permutations 