The on-line and off-line consequences of blogging

I few days ago I found a post from Tobias Escher talking about Why should researchers blog?. His post was interesting but opposite to Ismael Peña hyphotesis so I just sent him the URL. Later Ismael put a comment to Tobias’s post and next Tobias answered him back. Finally both will meet each other in Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0 Conference at York and they probably will continue their discussion (I will join them too).

If you read their posts and comments I guess you will agree that both of them have arguments which represent what has happened. Tobias posted and Ismael commented, both on the Net, and on September they will meet face to face. Produce information on the Internet has consequences as far as people consume the information and produce, with their comments, new information or as far as people use the information in their everyday life interactions. That means a communication process happens on-line. But also happens off-line.

What is the moral of the story? Produce or consume information is just first step to interaction process. The interaction could be on-line or off-line, but is needed. What about Health? The Internet is plenty of health information but there is a lack of virtual communication between health professionals and patients. So probably the interaction is still face to face, when sometimes an on-line interaction would be enough. What will happen if information is growing and communication is unchanging in healthcare as a social and complex system?