Re: Blog about my Linux

Dan C (youmustbejoking@xxxxxxxxxxx) writes:
On Wed, 31 May 2006 00:23:10 +0000, Poly-poly man wrote:

I just created a blog about my linux box and the experiences I've had on it.

http://my-penguin.blogspot.com/

Check it out sometime if you want.

It's even more stupid than most of the other 68 billion blogs on the
internet, which is hard to even imagine. Why do you losers feel the need
to share your drivel with others? Do you think anyone actually reads that
***, or cares one bit about it? Get a clue, doofus.

You're missing the point.

Blogs aren't a new thing, though too many forget or never knew.

Forty years ago, a group that left the San Francisco Mime Troupe
were using a mimeograph machine for broadsides and then near instant
publishing in San Francisco. Not just publishing announcements of
coming events, or reporst on what had happened, but even printing
as things were happening, as instant as you can get with a centralized
printing press.

One thing they published was Richard Brautigan's "All Watched Over by
Machines of Loving Grace". While I can find no connection, Lee Felsenstein
used "Loving Grace" as a company name in connection with Community Memory
in Berkely in 1974 (first public access computer bulletin board, run off a
mainframe that had come from SAIL), and then used it in his company name
when he designed the Pennywhistle modem (published in 1976), the Processor
Technology SOL computer (also 1976) and the Osborne 1 computer. And he
clearly has stated he used the name because of the poem.

But then a couple of years ago, I met the granddaughters of Fred Pohl
and Judith Merill, who were both part of the Golden Age of science fiction
starting in the late thirties. And so many involved in science fiction
had fanzines, which are in a sense the forerunners of blogs. As Judith
Merill said in her autobiography, back then there was no real difference
between readers and writers, since they all were both, or wanted to be.
And in meeting the granddaughters, I suddenly realized the group in San
Francisco had to be influenced by science fiction zines, since one of
those involved, Chester Anderson, had written some science fiction (that
had been published).

Those were my models a decade ago when I started with the newsgroup. Here's
the printing press that I'd been waiting for for decades, so there is lots
one can do with it. I can look up some of my posts from 1996, and they
were "blogging", ie writing up something out in the public realm as soon
as I got home, before the term had originated.

The problem with blogging today is that too few remember or know of
such predecessors. They likely don't even grasp that the reason blogs
are set up the way they are, ie latest entry at the top, is because then
one doesn't have to wait for the full page to load to see if there's
a new entry. And instead of content driving them, ie nobody was
talking about the Montreal Fringe Festival back in 1996 online so I
did it, too many are doing it because they can, because it's become
socially respectable, because it's something their friends are
doing. It's become easy for them to do it, with some branded
internet site (even though most ISPs include webspace as part of
the basic package).

And then they lose their power, because instead of sharing important
things, their only content is the really trivial. Or news that has
already travelled far already. We see that latter in the newsgroups,
pick a Big Enough Event and in all kinds of newsgroups people will
forward some story from old media, as if we haven't already heard it
from old media already.


So no, having a blog means nothing in itself because it's just a
different way of publishing something. If it's drivel, then of
course it's drivel whether it's a newsgroup posting, a guy standing
by the side of a road passing out his broadside, or on a blog. But
if the content is worthwhile, then the means of publishing means
nothing.

Michael


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