This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Not just a "pro" problem Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

Dave Winer claims that one of the things blogging addresses is the conventional wisdom problem that the "professional" media have:

At the time I started blogging, the pros were reporting that there was no new Macintosh software. I would call these reporters and point out that there was lots of new Mac software, they were using it, they knew about it. They would respond by saying Everyone knows there's no new Mac software.

I don't think knew they were being dishonest, by then reporting wasn't about facts, it was about conventional wisdom. If CW said there was no new Mac software then the reporters would report that. This meant that competitors didn't actually have to win in the market, that's much harder, they just had to convince the reporters that they had. This leads to not only a very wrong place, but a dangerous one, because the reporters had come to have so much power. With no accountability, no way to vote them out of office, we were totally controlled by them. That's why blogging came about, as a counter-action to the corruption of the professional system.

This isn't a problem limited to reporters, professional or otherwise. I can't recall who said this, but it's applicable here: "It's not what you know that kills you, it's what you know that isn't so". The "conventional wisdom" pops up all over the place, all the time. Winer's Mac example is perfect - so is the "Isn't Smalltalk dead?" question that comes up a lot. Heck, Winer contributed to this himself a little while back - look at this post where he simply assumed (wrongly, as it turned out) that a scaling issue was due to using a scripting language instead of a "real" one. There's a piece of conventional wisdom that has slowed progress in the IT sector for decades now.

This isn't a problem simply of professionals versus the "squeaky clean" blogger heroes - it's about the unrevised assumptions we all make about everyday things. We all have our biases, and plenty of them are uninformed - at best.