Rebecca Blood
At Blogtalk, Rebecca Blood makes a very interesting argument that weblogs are just one aspect of an increasing shift toward citizen science and, more broadly, toward broad participation in research that meets the highest standards. She calls these "professional" standards, but clearly we simply mean the best standards -- not the standards of the profession.
The audience here is oddly skeptical, from the tone of the questions. It seems clear to me.... (Both Blood and, earlier, Jenny Weight hold out lots of hope for the semantic web as a solution to the limitations of tools like Technorati.)