Broken Wing

What is a blog?

Yesterday, a reader left this lengthy comment:

I don’t have a comment about this entry in particular; it is more about the ‘blog’ as a whole. I’d like to see a revival of the “Ask Tim” forum. I have so many questions, yet so few answers.

You are surely aware of my aging condition and it is entirely possible that I may drop dead at any moment.. So, rather than waiting for the return of “Ask Tim”, I’m just going to go ahead and ask my question. What the heck is a ‘blog’. Back in my day (just after we stopped golfing the old fashioned way) the kids used ‘websites’ to express their thoughts. Take a look at an ol’ favorite of mine: http://millatime.homestead.com/home.html

This ‘website’ was created by the Omnivorous, well mostly Maruchen, Lutheran formally known as “T-Mills”. “Where have all the websites gone, long time ago…. and why have blogs taken over? Kids these days with their fancy shoes and crazy thoughts. To qote my favorite rap artist, the Fresh Prince, “parents just don’t understand..”

DAD

From this tome of a comment (over 100 printed pages), I have distilled a few worthwhile questions:

1. What is a blog?
2. Why have blogs taken over?

There was also an implicit question about the "Ask Tim" advice column that was on a website I produced in a former lifetime. So, in "Ask Tim" style I will answer these questions. I think this would actually be a good "theme" for this sort of website, except there are so few readers of this site that each person would have to generate 3.5 questions a week just to have a daily post. Anyways, on with the answering.

1. What is a blog?I probably should have defined it when I started this website, since some of my friends (who are probably the only readers) feel the same way about technology that bacteria feels towards penicillin. If I wanted to double the number of my friends who read this, I could distribute this website via carrier pigeon as well as in "blog" form.

   Anyways, on with the answering. The canonical, or "Boring", definition of a blog can be found here. I believe I can provide a definition that goes beyond that.

   Some blogs are compilations of interesting news articles. In this case, the intended audience is lazy people who can't be bothered to look at more than one website.

   Other blogs are intimately personal, detailing the minutiae of the authors daily life. There is no intended audience, per se. What happens is that in real life the authors try to tell everyone the boring details of their lives, and real people stopped listening to them. So, they publish it in blog form, ostensibly so that the whole world can read it, but knowing that they'll be lucky if one person stumbles across it.

   I wouldn't categorize this blog as either one of the above, though it matches the first type in terms of uselessness, and the second type in terms of readership. A blog generally has some sort of sequentiality to it, e.g. today's news depends on yesterday's news, or today's boring occurences depend on yesterday's boring occurences. In contrast, this website is more like random independent observations that I'm cramming into a blog system because it is free for students.

2. Why have blogs taken over? Blogs are popular because they combine two things that people really like: Talking about themselves and telling people all of their crappy ideas.

So, that's all for today. If anyone actually read this far, I will add that if anyone does have a question you need answering, I am all knowing, so you've come to the right place. Just leave it in the comments. Posted by mill1991 at September 29, 2004 11:54 AM | TrackBack