Speaking at the recent SxSW conference Bruce Sterling predicted the end of blogging within 10 years.

While I'll be glad to be able to get back to a life where I don't spend half my waking hours trawling through the internet feeling I must try and keep up with this never ending river of information I wonder if the death of blogs will be a good thing or bad.

For a start I think the increasing power of citizen reportage has to be a good thing. The mainstream press is so comfortable these days that it doesn't like to be seen as too critical of the establishment (political or big business) which leaves a lot of the oversight to the masses - and blogging and wikis and forums are easy accessible ways to facilitate that.

But there's a lot of dross and spam and idle chatter out there (and I include this blog in the latter)

Where I think Bruce is right though is that there will be an evolution and we've no way to predict what technology will make possible and popular. Today blogging is supplemented by twitter(ing) ... who knows what the next advances in personal portable communication technology (and bandwidth delivery) will make possible and practical.

At least I've got 10 years to find a new outlet for my idle pondering ;)