“Your readers know more than you.”

Dan Gillmor coined this as the now-familiar journalistic koan: the reporter aims to inform but always finds that some readers have more information about the story they’re reporting. This was always the case, he explained, but it took on a new urgency in the Internet era, as readers found outlets to respond, and correct, reporters publicly.

Why do people still read blogs? There are, obviously, many well-written articles tucked into the blog format by professional journalists, as well as by unpaid savants like Nate Silver.

The engineer looks at the law and asks, why is it so sloppy? Take the DMCA-CDA disparity, or the fact that anonynous political robocalls are legal in many states while anonymous political commercials are not. The software engineer wonders why this all can’t be straightened out.