gifts

There is a tremendous amount of generosity in the blog world. Folk are often pointing us to information that have not encountered ourselves. Others fill in background detail on an amazing array of subjects. People share their thoughts, insights, expertise, wit, and whines.

Probably not since the letter, diary and note writing days of the Victorian and Edwardian world have we such an amazing resource of opinions, thoughts, arguments, stories by individuals sharing their own thoughts and words.

Eamonn, an always knowledgeable guide to the web, has posted a link related to FC Now that leads to Rebecca Blood's essay, Weblogs: a history and a perspective.

Blood talks about two kinds of blogs. The first includes short comment with a link to something else. These started in the late 1990s.

She writes:

In September of 2000 there are thousands of weblogs: topic-oriented weblogs, alternative viewpoints, astute examinations of the human condition as reflected by mainstream media, short-form journals, links to the weird, and free-form notebooks of ideas. Traditional weblogs perform a valuable filtering service and provide tools for more critical evaluation of the information available on the web.

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Blood also talks about a second group of blogs, made available by free programs like Blogger, that allow non-techies to also participate within the general web conversation.

While weblogs had always included a mix of links, commentary, and personal notes, in the post-Blogger explosion increasing numbers of weblogs eschewed this focus on the web-at-large in favor of a sort of short-form journal. These blogs, often updated several times a day, were instead a record of the blogger's thoughts: something noticed on the way to work, notes about the weekend, a quick reflection on some subject or another. Links took the reader to the site of another blogger with whom the first was having a public conversation or had met the previous evening, or to the site of a band he had seen the night before. Full-blown conversations were carried on between three or five blogs, each referencing the other in their agreement or rebuttal of the other's positions. Cults of personality sprung up as new blogs appeared, certain names appearing over and over in daily entries or listed in the obligatory sidebar of "other weblogs" (a holdover from Cam's original list). It was, and is, fascinating to see new bloggers position themselves in this community, referencing and reacting to those blogs they read most, their sidebar an affirmation of the tribe to which they wish to belong.

Finally, Blood says that she noticed in creating her own blog that what she writing about was not necessarily what she thought would be writing about. And that as she continued to write, she started developing a better idea of what she thought.