Introduction
I've haven't really got into blogging myself (yet) and never thought of it as social networking. This topic changed my concept that the majority of bloggers are people with too much time on their hands and showed me that it's a way to make friends with similar interests online. Personally I prefer 'real' friends that I talk to outside of cyberspace, but for those that may live in an area away from people with the same passions and beliefs I can see blogging as a great alternative. Even though you may never meet any of them outside of the Internet, these online groups can bring a sense of community and belonging. Well, those are my thoughts on the course work anyway.
Activity One - Discussion
"The early days of blogging were extremely optimistic about the potential of blogs to give everyone who wanted one a voice and a venue to publish. Now that blogging is over a decade old, to what extent have these early predictions come true?"
It is certainly true that people with uncensored Internet access now have an easy avenue for sharing their opinions and raising issues others may never of know about. However those without access to or censored Internet access are still restricted in publishing content easily.
Sky mentions language and literacy skills another limitation:
"It's important to remember that some people still don't have access to the Internet, or to the skills necessary to communicate online (such as literacy). In some cases, people may have access to the Internet and be literate, but not in a language that they can use effectively online.
If you're interested in this question, it might be useful to look for recent research on 'the digital divide'."
So the answer is technically no, but it sure comes close.
"Rettberg talks about blogs facilitating ‘distributed conversations’ and even ‘distributed communities’; what do you understand these terms to mean?"
Distributed conversations: To me distributed conversations are where every participant has an equal voice. Blog readers are limited to comments that are moderated by the blogger; even then they are at the bottom of the page and that's not exactly equal.
Distributed communities: Communities between blogs and bloggers most definitely exist, but each node is not equal. Like in off-line society some people are more popular and powerful. Bloggers that have more inward links or readers have their opinion more respected.