A blog, as we have seen, is the collaboration of HTML, Javascript, PHP, AdobeReader, and who knows how many other Internet languages. It's a whole world of coding and script which you, as the blogger, unwittingly control through HTML-run cute little buttons and interfaces. Little do you realize the presence of the mass skeletal framework of the blog which knows how to write and re-write itself, thanks to Blogger.
Blogger is our real machine, which helps connect it's tools for HTML drafting with the internet with your laptop. It helps you upload pictures, enables you to write blog posts, and let's you publish on the Internet and connect to other websites - and thus other people. You can add multiple authors to it, which is why the idea of "class blogs" became so popular. It's an easy, fast way to communicate.
Beyond the computer scripting of the blog, a blog also a product of years of human ingenuity. I mean, if you Google "blog," this is what turns up:
It doesn't even mention the actual underlying coding of a blog, or the physical location of it. It emphasizes only the human component. Although it's an important component, we saw previously that it's not the only one.
Beginning with the creation of the Internet, a blog's homeland (although it's actually made through fiber optic cables and massive physical servers located in warehouses across the country), it moved into more and more complicated ways of creating webpages. I still remember what webpages looked like back in the day. There were something like this.
Yup. It's George R.R. Martin's official website.
Anyways. It is the product of a cultural value system that wanted greater and bigger things, as well as faster ways to communicate. It stems from a desire to express oneself. While I'm sure humans have always had a desire to share and craft their lives and personalities to other people, the creation of the blog is not only a direct result of that but also the fuel for that desire. We are now seeing people's personal lives on the Internet in concentrations never before seen. Prior to the Internet, I'm not sure how people connected and crafted virtual personalities.
Such complicated blogs and websites as this are a good example. Feministing.com is one of the most intricately created blogs. Anyone is free to register and become an author. You can post anything you'd like, but it'll most likely be about feminist news and musings. The blog has a system of editors, and as such, is a kind of newspaper generated by its editors as well as by the general public. So, really, a blog is a product of the human desire to connect and share information, as well as craft a personality. But is also changes information, and it blends different genres and social rules together to create something new a new component of the Internet and a new "self". I can be a self-made journalist and end up famous on blogs. Or, I can post pictures of my cat and gain a following of people who enjoy cat humor. Or, I could just be one of those people who trolls and rants about things no one reads about. It's all up to me - and the people reading me.
Now, although there is this sense of newness, blogs are actually beginning to form informal rules, especially if you want your blog read and recognized. You have to launch a blog, for example, with at least 3-5 posts. Readers think you're lazy or "too new" if they see only one post. If you want to gain readers, post and comment on the blogs of people who write similar things. If they like what you say about them, they will likely search out your blog and read about you. If they like your blog there, they might link it in one of their posts and thereby encourage their readers to go to your blog. There are rules for advertising, rules for copyright (since, interestingly enough, your blog is actually a copyrighted publishing platform. You can be punished for plagiarizing someone's blog, and a quick Google search of your posts can quickly uncover culprits), and social rules of engagement. For example, "trolling" is going to other blogs (or any website that enables comments) and spewing hateful or idiosyncratic posts on those blogs. These people try to polarize discussion, gain control and attention. The best way to deal with them is to block them, delete them, and report them; they have no place in cyber-universe.
Just as we enforce social rules of communication in real life, so we do it on the blog, which then reflects and enforces those values back onto us.
I love writing blogs. I have creative space with lots of fun tools and gadgets to do all kinds of things. I find that I feel more like myself when I am writing, and a blog is a fascinating tool to conduct my personality onto the cybernet.
A blog is a wondrous piece of technology. It's both an extension of ourselves and our values as well as a self-reflective mechanism for changing those values.
******
I'm also not the only one writing a blog about a blog. ;-)
Blogger is our real machine, which helps connect it's tools for HTML drafting with the internet with your laptop. It helps you upload pictures, enables you to write blog posts, and let's you publish on the Internet and connect to other websites - and thus other people. You can add multiple authors to it, which is why the idea of "class blogs" became so popular. It's an easy, fast way to communicate.
Beyond the computer scripting of the blog, a blog also a product of years of human ingenuity. I mean, if you Google "blog," this is what turns up:
It doesn't even mention the actual underlying coding of a blog, or the physical location of it. It emphasizes only the human component. Although it's an important component, we saw previously that it's not the only one.
Beginning with the creation of the Internet, a blog's homeland (although it's actually made through fiber optic cables and massive physical servers located in warehouses across the country), it moved into more and more complicated ways of creating webpages. I still remember what webpages looked like back in the day. There were something like this.
Yup. It's George R.R. Martin's official website.
Anyways. It is the product of a cultural value system that wanted greater and bigger things, as well as faster ways to communicate. It stems from a desire to express oneself. While I'm sure humans have always had a desire to share and craft their lives and personalities to other people, the creation of the blog is not only a direct result of that but also the fuel for that desire. We are now seeing people's personal lives on the Internet in concentrations never before seen. Prior to the Internet, I'm not sure how people connected and crafted virtual personalities.
Such complicated blogs and websites as this are a good example. Feministing.com is one of the most intricately created blogs. Anyone is free to register and become an author. You can post anything you'd like, but it'll most likely be about feminist news and musings. The blog has a system of editors, and as such, is a kind of newspaper generated by its editors as well as by the general public. So, really, a blog is a product of the human desire to connect and share information, as well as craft a personality. But is also changes information, and it blends different genres and social rules together to create something new a new component of the Internet and a new "self". I can be a self-made journalist and end up famous on blogs. Or, I can post pictures of my cat and gain a following of people who enjoy cat humor. Or, I could just be one of those people who trolls and rants about things no one reads about. It's all up to me - and the people reading me.
Now, although there is this sense of newness, blogs are actually beginning to form informal rules, especially if you want your blog read and recognized. You have to launch a blog, for example, with at least 3-5 posts. Readers think you're lazy or "too new" if they see only one post. If you want to gain readers, post and comment on the blogs of people who write similar things. If they like what you say about them, they will likely search out your blog and read about you. If they like your blog there, they might link it in one of their posts and thereby encourage their readers to go to your blog. There are rules for advertising, rules for copyright (since, interestingly enough, your blog is actually a copyrighted publishing platform. You can be punished for plagiarizing someone's blog, and a quick Google search of your posts can quickly uncover culprits), and social rules of engagement. For example, "trolling" is going to other blogs (or any website that enables comments) and spewing hateful or idiosyncratic posts on those blogs. These people try to polarize discussion, gain control and attention. The best way to deal with them is to block them, delete them, and report them; they have no place in cyber-universe.
Just as we enforce social rules of communication in real life, so we do it on the blog, which then reflects and enforces those values back onto us.
I love writing blogs. I have creative space with lots of fun tools and gadgets to do all kinds of things. I find that I feel more like myself when I am writing, and a blog is a fascinating tool to conduct my personality onto the cybernet.
A blog is a wondrous piece of technology. It's both an extension of ourselves and our values as well as a self-reflective mechanism for changing those values.
******
I'm also not the only one writing a blog about a blog. ;-)
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