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As debate grows over whether technology and innovation are pulling people together or pushing them apart, an Internet sub-culture has been growing rapidly, demonstrative of the world’s increasing love affair with computers. I refer to blogging culture. For the uninitiated, blogging is the act of publishing a personal or professional online journal commonly referred to as a blog --- short of WeB log.
During the 90’s, those ambitious enough to build personal web pages using HTML or a handy WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor produced what are commonly referred to as vanity pages. These were essentially static sites detailing ones existence and providing links and commentary regarding things of immense personal interest. Typically such sites included flashy graphics, infuriating design decisions and inane, stolen, and/or repetitive childish content.
I published one such site in the mid 90’s describing my fascination with The Smashing Pumpkins and Beavis and Butthead – make any comment you want, you watched it too. These were the sites you found lurking around Geocities, or various ISP user web space areas.
My shrine to 90’s alternative MTV culture went the way of the dodo many years back when I unsubscribed from CompuServe and discovered some more adult tastes, but you can still find many similar sites alive and well across the web, though they are being rapidly replaced by the new millennium’s answer to the vanity page --- The Blog.
Rather than simply uploading images of their pets, vanity page operators began to publish regular text based updates detailing their everyday lives, much like a standard personal journal. Services specializing in the design and management of these online journals began to emerge, and have become popular among Internet junkies in all walks of life --- www.livejournal.com, www.blogger.com, www.sixapart.com.
Many consider blogs a significant improvement from vanity pages. One of the great things about the simplification of Internet publishing thanks to blogging is that it has allowed the less technically inclined individual to operate their own Internet publishing space. Wherein may lie the biggest caveat of blogging, that anyone is capable of doing it. Thankfully, the design controls provided by most blogging services make it difficult to create anything as seizure inducing as vanity pages littered with animated graphics and fantastically complex backgrounds.
Survey a few blog communities, and it will become quite apparent that many blogs were conceived in the wee hours of the morning as a means of whining about a breakup or as passive method of narrating ones high school born teen angst. Hormones + HTML … recipe for text based banality.
Many blogs, especially those described above, are of little to no interest to the average internet user. However, as blog numbers grow, many publishers are becoming increasingly topical. While some blogs focus on politics, others discuss the latest tech gadgets, headlines, social movements, fashion trends, et cetera. If you can think of it, there is probably someone out there who has blogged about it.
Several celebrities both A list (www.jeffbridges.com) and wash-ups (www.wilwheaton.com), Academics (www.lessig.org/blog), and politicians, have also found a niche in the blogging world. And where would the Internet be if we didn’t have a few adult film stars getting in on the action? (Sorry I’m not listing any URLs for that one, you’ll have to track them down yourself)
Last year, Google took the initiative to purchase one of the original Internet blogging services – Blogger.com. Analysts praised Google’s move, and see a promising future for blogging. For the business folk, blogging represents an interesting new means of getting inside the mind of the consumer. One of the methods Google uses to select and rank the news stories listed on Google news (news.google.com) is by comparing news article topics to subjects being discussed by bloggers.
Others are more concerned with the cultural implications of the phenomenon. While there are exceptions to the rule, the majority of blogs are personal in nature and sometimes contain incriminating information. What exactly is the fascination with writing about ones everyday thoughts and actions, and publishing the text on the web for the world to read? Allow me to speculate…
Ego Trippin’ – My thoughts and opinions are too significant to be limited to those lucky enough to experience my physical company. The world must have the opportunity to discover and learn from my profound existence through my blog. – I do not think this is the motivation of most bloggers, though many consider the act of blogging to be an exercise in self promotion and a demonstration of self interest.
Therapy – Whether they realize it or not, I believe most bloggers blog in an effort to vent and cope with daily frustrations. Like with the standard personal/private journals kept throughout the ages, blogs are the modern means of putting things in perspective by writing it all down, or in this case, typing it all in.
The Artist – The blog is a struggling writer’s dream. A personal environment not subject to the harsh judgments of editors and literary critics where one can create and experiment. – Many have blogged as fictitious characters that exist only in the writer’s mind, and digitally on the web. Comedy Central recently purchased the rights to a character created by a blogger and had plans to develop it into a new animated television program.
The utility of blog have extended beyond personal gratification. Blogs have recently become a trend in the business world. Executives at fortune 500 companies have looked to blogging as a means of developing a rapport with employees as well as investors. Blog entries have also been showing up in the news, as news media venues relay the opinions of what they call “professional” bloggers who are, for all intents and purposes, operating their own news service, with a personal spin.
I cannot answer most of the questions raised by this article regarding the significance of blogging in the Internet world. I can, however, in the spirit of blogging, offer my own opinion on the matter…
Despite suggestions to the contrary, I do not think that blogs are polluting the Internet environment with any more junk than was already present. While I’m not really interested in the exploits of a fifteen year old goth girl hell bent of meeting Johnny Depp before the whole world folds in on itself in a tremendous blaze of counter-culture fueled anarchy, I’m still not interested in yet another herbal penis enlarging pill – at least the disillusioned teen isn’t e-mailing me daily.
For many I think blogs are a necessary escape, though are taken a little too seriously by some, while for others this fascinating new outlet gets the creative juices flowing at a time when creativity seems to be reserved for an exploited by those in marketing departments. My blogs covers newsworthy topics and events, and does its best to avoid discussion of life events, and it attracts its own respectable amount of visitors daily who both support and criticize my spin on the events of the world.
Monstrosity or masterpiece, blogs are here to stay. Those not inclined to write are now able to publish picture based blogs called moblogs often employing a cell phone based camera to document their existence visually (www.textamerica.com). Consider checking out a few blogs and perhaps elect to make your own contribution to the seemingly endless flow in information and opinion making its way to the web daily.
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