Upward Linkage

Loath as I am to prolong the discussion, I think one point that was missing from my blogrolling post is this: the natural tendency is to link to blogs that are more popular than one's own. (That's 'natural tendency', not 'universal absolute'; of course I'm not saying everyone always links up the food chain.) For one thing, the more popular a blog is, the easier it is to find, whatever the ranking mechanism is. Also, there is obviously more to be gained from linking upward (and self-interest manifests in all sorts of ways, not all of them entirely conscious).

The point is that upward linkage is effectively the default, and it takes a conscious effort to correct the imbalance. And what I was trying to say in my previous post is that that effort is necessary to maintaining a sphere in which everyone with something to say has an opportunity to be heard.

Power, money, information--they all tend to concentrate. It's the way things work. It's not necessarily the result of any malignant intent; it just happens. Maintaining a degree of opportunity in the face of this concentration takes a constant effort.

[That's all, folks]