What Would Orwell Blog?

The Handcaper points me to last night’s broadcast on NPR of Open Source, hosted by Christopher Lydon. The show was a re-run of “Who Owns Orwell?” a look at what Orwell would think of the modern world, why he remains relevant, and where Orwell would hang his political shingle. Lydon’s guests were professor Tom Gleason of Brown University and Jeffrey Numberg (?) of Stanford. It’s not a bad show, with some fairly predictable discussion of American imperialism and contemporary political doublespeak. But right at the end there is a great exchange where Lydon asks, “what would Orwell make of blogging? Would he be blogging today?” Numberg replies, “well, it is pretty silly to ask if Orwell would have been blogging… but yes, I think he might very well have been a blogger. It would have given him the freedom to write what he wanted, without any editorial control.” You can stream the show from here.