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Mar 11 2008 5:36PM EDT

When You Think The Internet Reinvented the World...

I'm supposed to be interviewing economist Tyler Cowen later today, and as preparation for the conversation I want to have, he pointed me to an essay by German cultural critic Walter Benjamin -- written in 1936. He essentially predicted blogging.

I pulled this from Benjamin's most famous piece, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction":

For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers - at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for "letters to the editor."

And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case.

At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer. As expert, which he had to become willy-nilly in an extremely specialized work process, even if only in some minor respect, the reader gains access to authorship.

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