The internet undoubtedly amplified the power of the press but the direction blogging is paving for the future of information collaboration is mind blowing.

The recent embrace of blogging by Nobel prize winning economist Dr. Becker and federal circuit judge Richard Posner, is a powerful testament to the blogging phenomenon.

From the beckner-posner-blog, first post:

bq. Blogging is a major new social, political, and economic phenomenon. It is a fresh and striking exemplification of Friedrich Hayek’s thesis that knowledge is widely distributed among people and that the challenge to society is to create mechanisms for pooling that knowledge. The powerful mechanism that was the focus of Hayek’s work, as as of economists generally, is the price system (the market). The newest mechanism is the “blogosphere.” There are 4 million blogs. The internet enables the instantaneous pooling (and hence correction, refinement, and amplification) of the ideas and opinions, facts and images, reportage and scholarship, generated by bloggers.

A remarkable and thought-provoking quote on the commoditization and economics of information.