This is a new book out by Calgary professor Dr. Michael Keren.

From the Press Release:

The lonely people are blogging, an activity marked by a deep sense of melancholy and social withdrawal.

“Bloggers think of themselves as rebels against mainstream society but that rebellion is mostly confined to cyberspace, which makes blogging as melancholic and illusionary as Don Quixote tilting at windmills,” he says.

There are more premises. Jim Elve at Blogs Canada deconstructs the PR and the Professors, the man who helped Canadian bloggers connect up perhaps more than any other Canadian, refutes Keren’s points piece by piece. Example:

Blogging, at least to Keren, lies outside the norms of civilized society. Someone’s living in a fantasy world but I posit that it is the good professor in his ivory tower. When I heard that his specialty is “Communication, Culture and Civil Society” and he holds a special research chair in that department, I bristled. To paraphrase another Calgarian, “University of Calgary students deserve better.”

Political bloggers are good citizens. While fewer of us are manning the barricades than in the pre-Internet days, more of us are involved in the legitimate political process. Members of Parliament are bloggers. US Presidential campaigns include blogs as an integral part of their strategy. Most importantly, bloggers are politically educated and I contend that among the ranks of Canadian political bloggers, there is a 90%+ voter turnout rate. Political blogging encourages ballot box action and to compare bloggers to terrorists is not only insulting. It’s just plain wrong.

Kerens views aren’t new, they been debated for years on Canadian radio and television.

The book is available at Amazon Canada. No customer reviews there, although it was released in October 2006.