Congrants to Gwen and glad to see Open Salon, as well as her, achieving this sort of success!

A couple of notes:

The Salon Blogs program actually began in early July 2002 and Julie Powell's blog was up and running in late Aug. Its first post is still here:

http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html

and I first linked to it here:

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2002/09/06.html

Also, I'm pretty sure that the "people formerly known as audience" was Jay Rosen's coinage. Or, at least, he popularized it....

@jameslouder: I discussed the colonial pamphlet precedent too, but in another part of the book!

@godhole: I've never understood why this is an issue ("How can you write a *book* about blogs? Why not do it in a blog?"). I am a blogger and have been for 7 years. But, you know, books are different from blogs. I love 'em both. Seems to me it's no stranger to write a book about blogging than to write one about movies or TV or music or any other medium.

For Trend2121 and others clamoring for examples of change: this article is a brief excerpt from a 350-page book, so one answer to your question is simply, "the book is full of examples." But to whet your appetite, let me mention just a few of the areas where significant changes have indeed flowed from the rise of blogs: technology, media, politics, business, healthcare... If you want to know what those changes are and what I see as their pros and cons, I can't summarize that for you in a brief comment. If I could I wouldn't have had to write a book.

OK, I spent enough years writing headlines myself that I am loath to make too big a deal about this. But for grmorrison and anyone else who wants to argue that blogs didn't really change everything, let me just say this once:

Of course I think blogs are hugely significant or I wouldn't have spent the last couple of years of my life researching and writing about them. But "Say Everything" does not include the statement "blogs changed everything," nor does it make that argument in other words. Because, really, I don't believe that blogs have changed everything -- just a lot of things.

So if you want to pick an argument with the headline, be my guest. But it might be more fun to read the article itself (or even the book, if you feel like it) and argue with that instead!

If he doesn't want us to say sotomaYOR, I guess it's time we stopped saying "sca-LEE-a" too. fter all, "SCALE-ee-a" is so much more "English-sounding."

Thank you for posting this -- a potent act of filial channeling, with fitting dollops of both championing and challenging!

"Lots of copies keeps stuff safe." The real way to protect yourself these days is to be profligate with your data. If it's something like playlists, where there's no particular call for privacy, then just do as much as you can to move stuff into the "cloud."

Of course, one of the things about iTunes that's a pain is that it does such a good job of hiding its inner workings from most users that -- its inner workings are hidden. So instead of simple backup strategies you need complex backup strategies, you've got to deal with the inscrutabilities of the iTunes library etc.

Glad to hear there was a happy ending. Gotta love the culture of Web-based tech support (that you wrote about -- what? -- 12 years ago, I think).

The COPA saga extends deep into Salon's past. It's astonishing that the law still had some life in it. And a relief to know that our long legal nightmare is finally over.

COPA was the coda (!) to the Communications Decency Act wars of the mid-'90s, but unlike the CDA it became like a zombie undead piece of legislation, the Law That Would Not Die. It is somehow fitting to have received this news on this day of so many other momentous changes...