Blogging is a major new social, political, and economic phenomenon enabled by the Internet, a transformative technology of vast social importance (think of what it is doing to the conventional news media, such as newspapers!). The Internet has revolutionized access to information, and sometimes misinformation as well. Information on the Internet comes from many sources. It is a fresh and striking exemplifi cation of Friedrich Hayek’s thesis that the knowledge essential to society (he emphasized the economic activity of a society, but the point is general) is widely distributed among people and that the social challenge is to create mechanisms for pooling that knowledge. The mechanism that was the focus of Hayek’s work, as of economists generally, is the price system (an explicit market). Price impounds the information of buyers and sellers concerning values and supply; the market is thus a method of aggregating information. The Internet illustrates the possibility of alternative mechanisms of such aggregation. The newest is the Internet- based “blogosphere.” The Internet enables the instantaneous pooling (and hence correction, refi nement, and amplifi cation) of the ideas and opinions, facts and images, reportage and scholarship, generated by bloggers. The blogosphere diΩers from a system with explicit prices and monetary compensation because information in this sphere is usually made available without expectation of any monetary compensation or other fi nancial rewards, although some bloggers have managed to attract advertising revenues and others (present company included) have made book deals.

博客是一种重要的新的社会、政治和经济现象，它是一种具有巨大社会重要性的变革性技术（想想它对传统的新闻媒体，比如报纸）的影响吧。互联网彻底改变了人们获取信息的方式，有时也带来了误报。因特网上的信息来源很多。这是弗里德里希·哈耶克（Friedrich Hayek）的论点的一个新的和引人注目的例证，即社会所必需的知识（他强调一个社会的经济活动，但重点是一般性的）在人们中广泛分布，而社会的挑战是建立汇集这些知识的机制。哈耶克工作的重点是价格体系（一个显性市场），这是经济学家们普遍认为的。价格收集了买卖双方有关价值和供应的信息；因此，市场是一种信息聚合的方法。互联网说明了这种聚合的替代机制的可能性。最新的是以互联网为基础的“博客圈”。互联网使博客作者产生的想法和观点、事实和图像、报告文学和学术知识瞬间汇集起来（并因此得到纠正、补充和扩大）。博客圈来自一个有明确价格和金钱补偿的系统，因为这个领域的信息通常是在没有任何金钱补偿或其他金融回报的情况下提供的，尽管一些博客作者成功地吸引了广告收入，而其他人（包括目前的公司）也达成了图书交易。