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Blogolution - Part 1

Believe it or not, I spent about 10 minutes trying to find the right title. I probably would never make it as a “happy-go-lucky blogger”. Blogolution: “Blog Revolution”, “Blog Evolution”, or “Blog Dissolution”. Lets take a look at what a blog is, the onset of blogging and what makes it the latest Internet revolution.

Wikipedia has an excellent entry for Blog, which I wholeheartedly recommend.

Blog - the word.

The word blog is simply the words “web log” processed through a lazy person word compressor algorithm. The word blogging is simply the same treatment applied to “web logging”.

Blog - the meaning.

To put it straight without much elaboration, a blog is a frequent (which depends from blogger to blogger) record/commentary/small essay/article/blurb about content on the web, personal experience, observations or public events possibly with an option of readers feedback, which may or may not be used.

The onset.

The roots of blogging lie in public communication and a need for self expression. Historically, public writing has been somewhat regulated/controlled by the authority of the media in context. In the past, the only communication devices available to a person have been telephone, ham radios and the Internet. Although the user is almost in full control of these devices and the communications made using them, telephone sadly lack the ability to broadcast. That leaves the ham radios and Internet as practical options to provide the user with a virtual dais to stand on and opine away. The vehicle of choice to deliver, however, is the Internet. It is used by the corporate world, the hacker world, as well as the philosophists, and families; the list goes on.
In the Internet world, the predecessor to blogs were perhaps journals. Another prominent influence was the popularity of message boards: Choose a topic, start one, host it and watch the readers post their content (Rules, guidelines and limitations vary). Another definite predecessor of blogs is the “homepage” - a nineties phenomenon that sprouted up everywhere. One reason why blogs have succeeded more than either of these is perhaps because the dynamic web has evolved to the point where the content has finally gained more importance than the delivery mechanism. Public content posters have grown used to these technologies, the technology of public posting is not the issue, the issue is what they want to post. Blogging is made easy by low-cost, easy-to-use technology that lets anyone — not just propellor-heads — be a publisher.

Welcome to Blogopolis

In the online city of Blogopolis, you are what you blog, what you blog about; it’s a cathartic experience (the word “blog” even sounds like the meaning of cathartic!). As a citizen of Blogopolis - an online persona - free to express oneself solely through the written word…and perhaps pictures. In Blogopolis, you can find a blog on just about any subject. The content varies from the blog that Martin Fowler writes about object oriented development and design patterns to blogs written by people about the progress they make in the latest diet they are on. You can read blogs of CSS gurus as well as blogs containing the ramblings of an average person living out the ordinary life. People write blogs about the work they did in the office today, they write blogs to express their political agenda, or chronicle the events of their presidential campaign, and when they loose, they may write blogs encouraging readers not to let certain people back in the White House. They are writing a blow-by-blow account of the Iraq war and about their visit to Falluja in Iraq. People are writing blogs because they got shut out as journalists and this is their chosen media of publishing now. And need I mention, people are writing blogs about other blogs! Check out the links section at the end of the article to see some interesting sampling of blogs.

Blog - Why some people don’t.

I’ll make some guesses here, but I shall elaborate in the next article.
You’re really lazy. You love privacy. Your life is not worth talking about. Legal restrictions. Fear of legal issues.

Blogminator.

No, this paragraph is not about a blog about Arnold Schwarzenegger, this in fact just means that this paragraph is the terminator of this blog article.

Oh I almost forgot… The Links section.

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