"History is a wonderful thing, if only it was true"
-Tolstoy

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Brief History and some links

10 year anniversary of blogs?

Happy Blogiversary - WSJ.com: "Once a neologism, outlandish to some, weblog has come to be abbreviated to blog, a brusque and jaunty word that no one, now, would think to look up in a dictionary. That said, the spell check on Microsoft Word has yet to awaken to the concept of the blog. Type in 'blogging,' for instance, and you will promptly earn a disapproving underscore in red, with the suggestion that 'bogging,' 'clogging,' 'flogging' or 'slogging' (unappetizing alternatives all) might, in truth, be the word you seek.

In the decade since their conception, blogs, once a smorgasbord of links, have evolved into vehicles for a fuller, more forceful and opinionated prose. Not all of it has been lovely to behold, or even edifying. Inevitably, there has been bombast, verbosity and exposure to the public eye of thoughts that, ideally, should have remained locked inside fevered heads. (The impact of blogs on public discourse has included, I contend, the emergence of a form of 'oral blogging,' noticeable at seminars and the like, where people who might once have asked brisk questions are now empowered by the blog form to hold forth at length, with little attempt at self-editing.)"

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