March 2011: Samizdata.net

No more than a handful of seconds ago the word 'blog' was odd and inexplicable, an alien representative of the rapidly evolving networked world. How things change. Blogs have long since entered the mainstream. What was once marginal to the culture is now increasingly central to it.  

Arianna Huffington's online aggregate of blogs has recently sold for a grand sum, while political bloggers like Guido Fawkes are prominent online players. Famed correspondents such as Robert Peston and Stephanie Flanders blog on the BBC website, in addition to their reporting duties on TV and radio. (In a bizarre twist on the traditional practice of the corporation's clerics they even venture to offer that most disreputable of things: an opinion.) 

However, if we move away from the sort of bloggers who are known even to those outside the digital world, we discover all manner of interesting things. One of which is Samizdata.net, set up by Perry de Havilland in 2001. The blog derives its name from the Russian word 'samizdat,' the system of underground publishing in the former Soviet Union which allowed works which were banned under Communist rule to be distributed. Samizdata.net is, like the Huffington Post, the work of a variety of contributors. It describes itself as being 'for people with a critically rational individualist perspective.' 

Should you find yourself in agreement with the likes of Karl Popper and Ayn Rand, you will find your cheerleaders on this blog. Samizdata.net sees the world through Popper and Rand, and sets itself in opposition to the politics and philosophy espoused by Noam Chomsky, George Monbiot and John Pilger. Whatever your view, this blog offers an entertaining, angry, and, occasionally, illuminating perspective on the endless debate over the institution and constitution of society.  

28 February 2011