Ok, then what is the proper way for information to flow? Who gets to create information? Who gets to share information? Who gets to write commentary? Who gets to create art? And so on?

Virtually every human activity can, on a level, be seen as 'manipulating the flow of information' and certainly everything people do online in the world of bits and bytes is 'manipulating the flow of information.' So, is it all bad? Is it all dangerous? If not, what kinds of information manipulation are ok? If it is, then we should all just sit on our hands, stop typing, and let .. hmm .. who???? manipulate the information instead.

Medley's questions are right to the point. And while, sure, ethics are personal, and they do get complicated when mixed in with religious politics or political religions, we shouldn't discount the necessity for ethical stands such as "First of all do no harm." Maybe the point is that it's the DEVIOUS MANIPULATION of anyone or anything, including information -- when the result is harm to someone else -- that just isn't ethical. Maybe the crucial word here is DEVIOUS and not necessarily manipulation.

What I meant to add is that if you admit that you're manipulating and admit your purpose, than you're not being devious -- such as the manipulation regarding the Scientology issue. Then at least those witnessing the manipulation understand what's going on and are not being deceived. We all manipulate words and ideas and information every day. Being up front about the biases behind that manipulation removes what's so "dangerous." What's do dangerous is deceit.

At least some of this may well be moot, as it would seem that (as a result of the fizzling of Textism's recent Googlebomb), that Google has indeed fine-tuned their pageranking system.

More here : http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/2179

Stavros, I still see weblogging's impact within Google. Search on Flash MX. Better yet -- search on Dishmatique.

The reason the weblogging effect didn't with the Verisign bomb is that this type of influence works primarily for medium interest or newer topics -- not biggie or entrenched topics such as Verisign.

I doubt that Google's not done much more than minor tweaks for obvious link ref pages.

And Medley and Elaine -- I consider a vote dangerous in indifferent hands...

That's true - recent googlewrangling like mathowie's http://a.wholelottanothing.org/) Critical IP googlebomb, or Neale's http://www.wrongwaygoback.com/) 'Zora Neale Hurston one, worked precisely because there wasn't a massive number of links already in existence to swim upstream against.

While I agree with power comes responsibility, I tend to think on the whole the weblog/google phenom is harmless. The major media has been deciding long enough what is useful information and what isn't. I see no harm to be found in spreading that power out to individuals.

My reasoning is simple enough. If, pre-google bomb, I were to search for the church of scientology and found no negative sites on the first few pages I would delve deeper. I wouldn't make the assumption that the sites listed at the top are the authorities on the subject.

This comes down to the burden residing on the shoulder of the individual seeking information. If they truly want to know something about something there is always a myriad of information available on the net. Perhaps they will need to dig for it, but that's the deal. To be informed, you must inform yourself, intelligently.

So, those of us with brains in our heads know enough to seek out multiple sources of information on any given subject. Great. But, Elaine mentions "Then at least those witnessing the manipulation understand what's going on and are not being deceived" and I have to take issue here. Sure, the people directly involved are aware and therefore aren't decieved. But what of the 55 year old lady in Utah thinking of donating some money to them. She knows nothing of our weblog/google games and cares not. She goes to google because she read about it in some internet for beginners book and assumes it is authoratative. Who bears the responsibility for the information she recieves? She does.

She may be uneducated in the ways of gathering valid and reliable information and she will likely suffer as a result of that. Time has shown that to be a trademark pattern in life. Those who don't know any better don't get any better.

But, to marshall the flow of information to protect her is a noble and greatly flawed idea. I believe it will directly lead to the very system that the major media uses, eventually. It could begin as a balancing act with google searches to ensure a varied and holistic return of results but quickly turn into a filter of sorts where only certain information gets placed due to it being understandable or contextually valid for the majority of readers.

wait. I just described CNN. I digress, I undress. I.. you get the idea.

"Any manipulation of the flow of information -- whether occurring through the censorship or manipulation of the mainstream media, through weblogging, through Google search results -- is dangerous."

No, it's a necessary evil. There is no such thing as an unfettered flow of information because the information has to start somewhere and has to be written down by someone, thusly introducing the writer's bias. You choose what to write about here and what not to, you do not give us all a minute by minute detail of your life. That is "manipulating the flow of information", isn't it? Why do you do that? Because you want to send a message about who you are and what you care about that may or may not be exactly the truth, I'm guessing. Not that I'm accusing you of lying, just that some things are left out because you'd rather they didn't see the light of day, as with any blogger, so we do not have an unfettered informational flow about BB, do we? Of course not, that is impossible. Always has been impossible, and yet, somehow we've made it through thousands of years of history with people finding ways to get at the truth.

But Mike, I never said any of this was evil. It's dangerous in that the process can be used to manipulate the flow of information and this can have negative consequences.

And flow of information isn't the same as origination of information -- flow is the means of communication a media, information is the media.

If I write what I want, and someone like Dave Winer filters my weblogs.com updates, or people can't find me at Google because they've googlebombed burningbird, or some organization gets my ISP to drop my connection -- that's manipulation the flow.

Ultimately, the way to completely control the flow of information from me is to get rid of me, permanently -- but I haven't pissed anyone _that_ much...yet ;-)

The reality is that all the visitors to the blogs on your current list were aggregated, they'd still fail to match the daily circulation of, say, the New York Times.

Sad but true. It's called mass media.

Blogs should be thought of as the conscience of the media, because of the immediacy of the dialog that can be provoked. And, hopefully, some of this will filter through to the mass media.

It's early days, let's not get carried away because we've found a way to publish out thoughts and ideas. In circulation terms, we have a long way to go.

Back to the drawing board.