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ABC's 'People of the Year' - Bloggers
Sammy at Palm Addict writes "ABC News have declared Bloggers to be their 'People of the Year'. 'A blog - short for "web log" - is an online personal journal that covers topics ranging from daily life to technology to culture to the arts. Blogs have made such an impact this year that Merriam-Webster named it the word of the year. This week, their influence has become readily apparent.'"
...it has a good side and a bad side. There's someone on Kuro5hin who's documented the dark side of Movable Type and, subsequently, Xanga weblogs. It turns out that in addition to "empowering" people's abilities to communicate, weblogs can also be used to stifle them, especially in the insidious case of Xanga. We always need to keep in mind how new technological advances have negative side-effects in addition to positive ones.
Except drudge doesn't usually write anything, so it's not really a blog. Usually just posts links to news articles already out there. He also posts pictures on his main site that are on other servers. He doesn't generate that much original content himself.
Still, I go there quite often just because the links are sometimes pretty interesting.
A group of linguists declared "blog" to be a word they want stricken from the English language and I couldn't agree more.
:(
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6773907/
Other previous hated words:
metrosexual (2003) -- although it made a funny South Park plot
chad (2001) -- the little piece of paper that chose our President
paradigm (1994) -- sadly, still used in 99% of business presentations
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
When the Web was introduced to the masses, everyone down to the last AOLer talked about building their own websites. But up until now many of those sites have been poorly updated piles of rubbish, a far cry from the web of individual voices and opinions around the world that many people thought the Web would bring.
So here we are in 2004, where blogers are now "people of the year" and when we look back at what's changed, it's almost nothing except for one thing: content management systems. You give people Frontpage or Dreamweaver, and they'll put out a poorly done site that's too complex for them to convienently update, but all of a sudden the simple blog-style of content management is introduced, and all of a sudden that vision of voices around the world is coming true. Was this the only thing we were missing the whole damn time?
I'm finding myself slightly stupified at the prospect that the only think keeping this vision from coming true is that we needed to take away the ability for users to make their own site, and then make the whole thing a little easier to update. We still have things like blogs about cats, so I'm not sure the content has become any better, but was this really all the user really needed? It boggles the mind.
So many people here seem to want to reiterate that this is a site for "nerds". That we're supposed to make a difference. But in the same breath, they bash others for using "l33tsp34k" or net abbreviations. They'll bash a teen LJ user for posting their virtual diary, but put forth the fury of crap on their own site and tout it as a masterpiece. What's crap to you isn't crap to others.
/. used to have a pretty decent sense of community. About the only time you see people being a group is to bash M$ or team up for the new dsitributed.net project. Yes, we've always disagreed... that's part of a community. But either I've grown very old very quickly, the /. populace has becoem extremely immature, or the community has just broken down for no apparent reason.
As for blogging in and of itself, why could it be considered bad? If Xanga allows for these types of issues, perhaps the creators of Xanga need to be blamed, not the trend of blogging. Blogging can be such an interesting look into the lives of others. Some of you are so far into nerddom that you are antisocial and don't care what others think. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But those of us that are curious about other people, or... God forbid... outgoing or extroverted, blogs let us see what's on the other side... the other side of the bridge, the city, the state or the world. How can this ever be a bad thing?
Yes, yes... almost everyone that comes to this site knows what a blog is. Maybe somebody doesn't. Maybe they are a neo-nerd, fresh to the community. Are you ACTUALLY offended that the term was described in a quote on the front page? Seriously... some people need to get over themselves. There are plenty of things that occur, are said or are shown on the internet that I feel are ignorant or ill-advised. But generally (this post, of course, being an exception), I just let it go.
It's sad really...