As noted in my previous post, I'm attending a conference in Columbus, Ohio. While getting my morning coffee, I noticed a photograph on the auditorium wall. This hundred-year-old photo struck me as a particularly apt visual metaphor for the blogosphere:

Image from The Ohio State University Archives.

Look carefully. Here we have photographers, the 'bloggers' of the early 20th century, documenting their surroundings. But what are they actually doing? They're taking pictures of each other. And someone (the metablogger?) is taking a picture of the lot of them. It's the photogosphere! Each photographer is creating something unique by building -- in a very literal sense -- on the work of other photographers. And isn't that, at least in large part, what we bloggers do?