Yes, it has happened. Yours truly has hit a little bump in the cyber road. It’s not that I’m board with blogging, as I do enjoy writing about what interests me and what does not interest you (especially with WiFi). However, as Ander Jacobsen pointed out a month ago in his entry, Why Bloggers Write So Much About Blogging:
Bloggers write about other bloggers, blogging and blogging technology. I think it’s in part a passing phenomenon: Here’s a thought that occurred to me:What’s the most used opening phrase when using the in-flight phones available in some planes? “Hi it’s me - Guess where I am? I’m in the air!”
What was the first thing people talked about when car phones came out? “Hey, guess where I am? I’m in the car!”. When the phones became draggable, then later portable and now certainly handheld and even smaller, people’s attitude towards the devices matures, they became less of a novelty and people were more focusing on the utility, the social implications and so on: which leads me to this theory:
What’s the first thing new bloggers write about? “Hey guess what - blogging is cool”
Increasing maturity of this technology will mean that there will be less blogging about blogging itself and more content, social interactions and interesting, emerging phenomena powered by the blogging technology.
I suppose it’s because I’ve been entirely swayed and need no more evidence for understanding the power of blogs in conjunction with Google. Microdoc (or as I like to refer to him: Dr. J), asked several rhetorical questions as to why blogging has caught on with such enthusiasm:
Why are blogs so successful? What is it that people like about blogging? And why is it that people will spend an inordinate amounts of time writing posts each day on their blog? On the other hand, what is it that makes a good blog that attracts readers? Which blogs attract readers? Why do readers spend loads of time reading other people’s blogs? After all, are not blogs simply websites, or there something that we have learnt to do in websites that suddenly has made this new form of a website attractive.
He then answers it with a quote from Seb’s Open Research:
Finally, I note that blogging itself is actually in the process of making people as easy to find as web pages on Google — it turns them into web pages!
Stressing the last part, I become a web page. Gnome-girl becomes a web page. Jason Ditz becomes a web page. We are digitizing our life, our tastes and preferences, our knowledge into what might one day become a Rosetta stone for historians (I always like that historical spin on things). Microdoc concurs, stating:
What attracts readers? The humanity, the realness of people who are being themselves. Then why do people spend time writing? Bloggers are conscious of their readership, often talking to them, pointing out the important sites of the Internet and just being themselves. In one sense, blogging is totally private, completed almost in isolation from the rest of the world, but on the other hand it is totally public, where thoughts, ideas, feelings are all on display to anyone who wishes to come by and read. There is something engaging about being yourself in a totally public place and being recognized for who you really are; this is a human desire, to be noticed for who you are.Blogging at its best is human conversation. It is a human being in web pages. That is why you find real people in Google, because blogs are indexed in Google.
A solid amen to that. Although I never finished it (I still would like to), I view blogging in some ways as I do an online role-playing game (as discussed partially here). Permanent recognition for the time and hard work you put into a project with tangibles you can quantitively and even qualitively analyze and grow from - that is empowerment.
As the adage goes: God made men, Samuel Colt made them equal – so to have blogs for humanity, with special caveats to journalism and punditry. And this notion of the Second Superpower, this ability to be heard, this ‘unprofessional yahoo rubish,’ has hit at the heart of the Establishment, which must now compete with 6 billion voices who can undermine its monolithic and ancien authority with the push of a button.
So, grab a glass of your favorite liquid as I hereby propose a toast. A toast to bloggers: televised or not, may you never stop doing what you do best, uploading your revolution one post at a time. You have become the medium and the message all in one fell swoop. Kudos.