Although blogging is a recent invention, its concepts are not necessarily new. Electronic communities had existed long before inter-networking and intra-networking.There was the amateur “ham” radio that had “glogs” and the Associated Press wire that was similar to a large chat room. In fact, many blogging terms are loaned from these earlier information and communication technologies.
In 1997, Jorn Barger began compiling blog sites. Later, Jesse James Garrett, Infosift editor, also began compiling blogs in his site. And, in November of that year, Garret sent the list to Cameron Barrett who published it on Camworld. Other bloggers who maintained similar sites began sending their universal resource locators to Garrett so that their blogs will be included in his list that grew so large.
In early 1999, Brigitte Eaton created the Eatonweb Portal that lists blogs that she compiled from the Web. Eaton’s only criterion was that a blog must consist of dated entries. During those times, bloggers debated on which was and which was not a blog, but since the Eatonweb Portal has the almost complete list of blogs available on the Web, Eaton’s definition prevailed.
Andrew Smales, a programmer from Toronto, Canada, discovered the easy-to-do blog that is accessible on the Web today. Pitas.com, the first do-it-yourself blog tool, was an accidental discovery when Smales, then 29 years old, stumbled upon the idea while he was developing a software that would allow him to easily update his personal website. It was a comment from an online visitor that gave Smales the idea of a nascent blogging community, and he set to work on a sister project to the diary software—a blogging tool that would become the Pitas Diaryland.
After Pyra Labs had launched the Blogger in August 1999, Dave Winer released the Edit this Page in December 1999, and Jeff Campbell introduced Velocinews in January 2000, the bandwagon jumping turned into an explosion because all of these online services were for free and all of them were designed to enable individuals to publish their own weblogs easily and quickly.
Consequently, the blogosphere grew at an astronomical level. By the end of 1999, the total number of blogs was estimated to be around 50. Five years later, the estimate ranged from 2.4 million to 4.1 million. The Perseus Development Corporation, a consulting firm that studies Internet trends, estimates that by the end of 2007, more than 10 million blogs will have been created.
Smales noted that the technology behind these online tools was neither new nor terribly sophisticated. He admitted that starting the project offered another explanation—people like to peek into other people’s lives. Reading blogs has a bit of voyeuristic thrill of flipping through someone’s journal no matter how mundane the topic and the content are. Today’s blogs have evolved well beyond the lists of links that characterized early efforts. They are diaries and soapboxes where people can post everything from the daily minutiae to weekly manifestoes to sophisticated cultural and political reporting.
In Media Virus, Douglas Rushoff quoted Immediast Underground’s Greg Ruggiero saying: “Media is a corporate possession. You cannot participate in the media. Bringing that into the foreground is the first step. The second step is to define the difference between the public and the audience. An audience is passive, while a public is participatory. We need a definition of media that is public in orientation.”
Bloggers sometimes contextualize an article by juxtaposing it with an article on a related subject. Each article, considered in the light of the other, may take an additional meaning, or even draw the reader to conclusions contrary to the implicit aim of each. By writing a few lines each day, bloggers begin to redefine mass media as a public and participatory endeavor.
The blogger, by virtue of simply writing down whatever is on his mind, will be confronted with his own thoughts and opinions. He will become a more confident writer by blogging every day. A community of 3, 20, or 100 people read a record of his thoughts. Being met with friendly voices, he may gain more confidence in his view of the world; he may begin to experiment with longer forms of writing, to play haiku, or to begin a creative project, one that he would have dismissed as being inconsequential or doubted he could complete only a few months before. These fragments, pieced together over months, can provide an unexpectedly intimate view of what it is to be a particular individual in a particular place at a particular time.
Inez Margarita Diestro Montenegro of IV-Sir Isaac Newton said, “Blogging has boosted my self-esteem, especially when people read my blogs and give their comments. Blogging made me think first before actually writing down what I want to say because I am aware that anyone can read my posts.”
As a blogger enunciates his opinions daily, this new awareness of his inner life may develop into his own perspective. Accustomed to expressing his thoughts on his own website, he will be able to fully articulate his opinions to himself and to others. He will become impatient with waiting for what others think before he decides, and, will begin to act in accordance with his inner voice instead. Ideally, he will become more reflective and will find his own ideas and opinions worthy of serious consideration.
“Blogging taught me to be more open. The fact that anyone could read anything that you put there. It taught me to express my ideas in a more fun and more creative way,” Jan Erika Sinchioco Basilio of IV-Sir Isaac Newton said, as she exemplifies the idea.
Thus, we should not view blogging merely as a technological novelty. Its impact on our world stretches beyond communication and personal entertainment and into the social and political realms of modern life.
“When I first stepped into high school, I had difficulty of communicating with other people around me. Using my blog, I now communicate with my friends and classmates easily,” said Carlo Cruda Pineda of IV-Albert Einstein, admitting the impact of blogging to his life.
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