The Twilight of the Information Middlemen

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Techno Files: The Twilight of the Information Middlemen:

"The emergence of two information sources that make us collectively richer and exist only because of fairly recent changes in the Internet.

"One, believe it or not, is the world of blogs. If you've been away, blogs are those essentially personal Web pages where bloggers list their thoughts, include pictures or sound clips, post links to other sites - and keep adding new thoughts. "

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"In principle, this publicly financed knowledge has always been the public's property, but until a few years ago there was no easy way to get it from research centers to a wide audience. Thus various middlemen arose - notably scientific journals, which did the expensive work of printing and distributing research papers in return for steep subscription costs.

"With the coming of the Internet, these intermediaries were no longer technically necessary - but, like the big music companies, they won't just fade away."

By JAMES FALLOWS, The New York Times, May 16, 2004.