"Ego Finds a New Outlet In 'Blogs'"
January 19, 2001 1:24 PM Subscribe
"Ego Finds a New Outlet In 'Blogs'"
blahblahweblogsblahblahyesi'minitblahblah. One of the few to acknowledge Justin Hall as Our Great Blog Father.
blahblahweblogsblahblahyesi'minitblahblah. One of the few to acknowledge Justin Hall as Our Great Blog Father.
blahblahblahI'mnotmentionedblahblahblahsevenblogsandyouthinksomeonewouldnoticeblahblahblahokayi'llshutupnow.
posted by davidgentle at 1:46 PM on January 19, 2001
posted by davidgentle at 1:46 PM on January 19, 2001
Hmm. Could someone put at least one space in my post please? Sorry.
posted by davidgentle at 1:47 PM on January 19, 2001
posted by davidgentle at 1:47 PM on January 19, 2001
Hey, somebody get Justin a "Weblogs: Who's Yer Daddy?!" t-shirt!
posted by bradlands at 1:47 PM on January 19, 2001
posted by bradlands at 1:47 PM on January 19, 2001
See, Justin is only "Weblog Daddy", because he had a page of links, together with personal revelations, back in 1995. What most people don't realise is that all personal web pages were like that in 1995. It's just that Justin honed it to a fine, obsessive art. And he wasn't writing a weblog. No fucking way.
My point: weblogs do not have a history as long as the web itself. Personal web sites -- "home pages" -- do. It's the kind of false mythologised past that's all too common. For instance, there are plenty of literary studies which try to appropriate mid-18th-c poets as "pre-Romantic". I'm sorry, but you can't be consciously "pre-Romantic". No one talks about William Morris as a "pre-modernist" writer, or Turner as a "pre-Impressionist". And Justin isn't a bloody pre-blogger.
posted by holgate at 2:02 PM on January 19, 2001
My point: weblogs do not have a history as long as the web itself. Personal web sites -- "home pages" -- do. It's the kind of false mythologised past that's all too common. For instance, there are plenty of literary studies which try to appropriate mid-18th-c poets as "pre-Romantic". I'm sorry, but you can't be consciously "pre-Romantic". No one talks about William Morris as a "pre-modernist" writer, or Turner as a "pre-Impressionist". And Justin isn't a bloody pre-blogger.
posted by holgate at 2:02 PM on January 19, 2001
Well I have to say that Bud.com (a Hall creation) made a lot of people realize the power of information filters... he may not have been the first true 'weblogger,' but there's no doubt that many of us owe him a debt.
Actually I was kind of disappointed to see his involvement in Plastic.com, which so far is pretty lame. But I guess it's a good place for Gamers.com to get some more exposure, or something...
posted by cell divide at 2:05 PM on January 19, 2001
Actually I was kind of disappointed to see his involvement in Plastic.com, which so far is pretty lame. But I guess it's a good place for Gamers.com to get some more exposure, or something...
posted by cell divide at 2:05 PM on January 19, 2001
I have to say that Bud.com (a Hall creation) made a lot of people realize the power of information filters...
I'll raise you Michael Sippey, and Stating The Obvious' "Filtered for Purity".
posted by holgate at 2:14 PM on January 19, 2001
I'll raise you Michael Sippey, and Stating The Obvious' "Filtered for Purity".
posted by holgate at 2:14 PM on January 19, 2001
*cough* 1993 *cough*
What's New
(of course, who could forget 1994's what's new and what's cool at mcom.com/Netscape)
posted by mathowie at 2:42 PM on January 19, 2001
What's New
(of course, who could forget 1994's what's new and what's cool at mcom.com/Netscape)
posted by mathowie at 2:42 PM on January 19, 2001
Well, the idea of a weblog actually predates the Web itself -- I can trace it back as far as 1945, and there are probably seeds of the idea even further back.
posted by jjg at 2:50 PM on January 19, 2001
posted by jjg at 2:50 PM on January 19, 2001
"What most people don't realise is that all personal web pages were like that in 1995."
No they weren't. There were many personal web pages that were far more than a list of links back then.
posted by heather at 3:09 PM on January 19, 2001
No they weren't. There were many personal web pages that were far more than a list of links back then.
posted by heather at 3:09 PM on January 19, 2001
>>I have to say that Bud.com (a Hall creation) made a lot
>>of people realize the power of information filters...
>
>I'll raise you Michael Sippey, and Stating The >Obvious' "Filtered for Purity".
I'll see that and raise you a Robot Wisdom, Scripting News, CamWorld, Tomalak's Realm and The Obscure Store and Reading Room. Bud.com was good (and I wish it were still being updated), but it was pretty low profile in comparison to StO and these others, not to mention Slashdot. Your play, Mr. Bond.
posted by jkottke at 3:30 PM on January 19, 2001
>>of people realize the power of information filters...
>
>I'll raise you Michael Sippey, and Stating The >Obvious' "Filtered for Purity".
I'll see that and raise you a Robot Wisdom, Scripting News, CamWorld, Tomalak's Realm and The Obscure Store and Reading Room. Bud.com was good (and I wish it were still being updated), but it was pretty low profile in comparison to StO and these others, not to mention Slashdot. Your play, Mr. Bond.
posted by jkottke at 3:30 PM on January 19, 2001
I can trace it back as far as 1945
You mean Vannevar Bush's "memex", right? Described in the article As We May Think in the July 1945 Atlantic Monthly:
'There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.'
posted by twitch at 3:36 PM on January 19, 2001
You mean Vannevar Bush's "memex", right? Described in the article As We May Think in the July 1945 Atlantic Monthly:
'There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.'
posted by twitch at 3:36 PM on January 19, 2001
>No they weren't. There were many
>personal web pages that were far
>more than a list of links back then.
Amen to that, jezebel... :-)
>*cough* 1993 *cough* -
>What's New
Actually, there are older ones...one in particular was maintained by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. I was trying to find it when I was working on an article that brushed on this topic, but to no avail. Perhaps somebody else can find it in the W3C archives.
Happy hunting :-)
posted by webchick at 3:37 PM on January 19, 2001
>personal web pages that were far
>more than a list of links back then.
Amen to that, jezebel... :-)
>*cough* 1993 *cough* -
>What's New
Actually, there are older ones...one in particular was maintained by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. I was trying to find it when I was working on an article that brushed on this topic, but to no avail. Perhaps somebody else can find it in the W3C archives.
Happy hunting :-)
posted by webchick at 3:37 PM on January 19, 2001
From the article:
Merholz looks forward to the day when anyone will be able to blog from anywhere at any time - forming, perhaps, a digital stream-of-consciousness.
"As we get more mobile, it will be easier and easier to put spontaneous thoughts out there," Merholz says. "The increasing omnipresence of the Internet will allow for the publishing of thought pretty much as it occurs."
Do you really think that will be an improvement? I mean sure it would make an interesting experiment, a "digital stream-of-consciousness," but it will surely make a worse web log. The best wee blogs, IMHO, are those that are thoughtful, and that thoughtfulness takes time and energy. Spontaneous thoughts are valuable, and recording them for later refinement is useful, but whose thoughts are ready to publish in real time? Besides mine maybe, I mean? Just thinking out loud here.
posted by ericost at 3:37 PM on January 19, 2001
Merholz looks forward to the day when anyone will be able to blog from anywhere at any time - forming, perhaps, a digital stream-of-consciousness.
"As we get more mobile, it will be easier and easier to put spontaneous thoughts out there," Merholz says. "The increasing omnipresence of the Internet will allow for the publishing of thought pretty much as it occurs."
Do you really think that will be an improvement? I mean sure it would make an interesting experiment, a "digital stream-of-consciousness," but it will surely make a worse web log. The best wee blogs, IMHO, are those that are thoughtful, and that thoughtfulness takes time and energy. Spontaneous thoughts are valuable, and recording them for later refinement is useful, but whose thoughts are ready to publish in real time? Besides mine maybe, I mean? Just thinking out loud here.
posted by ericost at 3:37 PM on January 19, 2001
Bud.com was good (and I wish it were still being updated), but it was pretty low profile in comparison to StO and these others
Amazing how the web works, though, isn't it? All of my web friends in 1998 or so lived on Bud.com, and I had never heard of StO... so for me and a few others it was very high profile.
posted by cell divide at 3:53 PM on January 19, 2001
Amazing how the web works, though, isn't it? All of my web friends in 1998 or so lived on Bud.com, and I had never heard of StO... so for me and a few others it was very high profile.
posted by cell divide at 3:53 PM on January 19, 2001
And how quickly we've forgotten Cyborganic and its great collection of personal sites, and Spacebar - oh, and its evil twin chatspace - whose name I no longer recall.
The lesson here, of course, being that right now web logs are the media darlings - but that dance will end - as it did for personal sites, online journals, and on and on.
posted by gsh at 4:13 PM on January 19, 2001
The lesson here, of course, being that right now web logs are the media darlings - but that dance will end - as it did for personal sites, online journals, and on and on.
posted by gsh at 4:13 PM on January 19, 2001
I deliberately didn't mention "What's New", because in the days of Mosaic, it really did manage to record pretty much every new web server out there. (memories of "When All The Links Were Dark Blue"). There wasn't a filter until the launch of "What's Cool", and it's been downhill ever since ;)
Jason, I'm thinking historically, not thematically by mentioning "Filter": Stating the Obvious dates from August 1st 1995 -- a week before the Netscape IPO -- which pretty much puts it in the right place at the right time, way before the sites you mention.
In a way, Justin reminds me of Picasso, or WB Yeats, who were always cited as representative of the particular artistic moment, even though their styles evolved dramatically as they grew older. Neither chasing the zeitgeist, nor setting the trends: simply a reliable point of reference.
Anyway. My first site, dating from early 1994, had four pages: sporadically-updated personal details, useful links, "cool" or quirky links, and links to friends. The format for that kind of site hasn't changed too much.
But I'm a lazy site-builder, and have always been envious of those, like Heather, or Philip Greenspun, who've been knocking out smart-looking sites with original content since year dot. And I do miss the Daily Ditty.
posted by holgate at 4:25 PM on January 19, 2001
Jason, I'm thinking historically, not thematically by mentioning "Filter": Stating the Obvious dates from August 1st 1995 -- a week before the Netscape IPO -- which pretty much puts it in the right place at the right time, way before the sites you mention.
In a way, Justin reminds me of Picasso, or WB Yeats, who were always cited as representative of the particular artistic moment, even though their styles evolved dramatically as they grew older. Neither chasing the zeitgeist, nor setting the trends: simply a reliable point of reference.
Anyway. My first site, dating from early 1994, had four pages: sporadically-updated personal details, useful links, "cool" or quirky links, and links to friends. The format for that kind of site hasn't changed too much.
But I'm a lazy site-builder, and have always been envious of those, like Heather, or Philip Greenspun, who've been knocking out smart-looking sites with original content since year dot. And I do miss the Daily Ditty.
posted by holgate at 4:25 PM on January 19, 2001
>Jason, I'm thinking historically, not thematically by
>mentioning "Filter": Stating the Obvious dates from
>August 1st 1995 -- a week before the Netscape IPO --
>which pretty much puts it in the right place at the right
>time, way before the sites you mention.
True, but Filter didn't start in 95, it started in sometime in 97 (still pretty early on, admittedly). Before that, StO was a series of essays (like Suck, Soundbitten, Rewired, Packet, DaveNet, etc.), not a weblog. Probably splitting hairs, and this all doesn't really matter, but it's just so fun reminiscing about the good old days.
posted by jkottke at 4:49 PM on January 19, 2001
>mentioning "Filter": Stating the Obvious dates from
>August 1st 1995 -- a week before the Netscape IPO --
>which pretty much puts it in the right place at the right
>time, way before the sites you mention.
True, but Filter didn't start in 95, it started in sometime in 97 (still pretty early on, admittedly). Before that, StO was a series of essays (like Suck, Soundbitten, Rewired, Packet, DaveNet, etc.), not a weblog. Probably splitting hairs, and this all doesn't really matter, but it's just so fun reminiscing about the good old days.
posted by jkottke at 4:49 PM on January 19, 2001
twitch: You got it.
webchick: I've never seen anything to substantiate the rumor that TBL ran a weblog. If you have even anecdotal evidence, I'd be interested to see it.
posted by jjg at 4:54 PM on January 19, 2001
webchick: I've never seen anything to substantiate the rumor that TBL ran a weblog. If you have even anecdotal evidence, I'd be interested to see it.
posted by jjg at 4:54 PM on January 19, 2001
I too enjoy reminiscing about the past of weblogs, Jason. However, the future is even more on my mind these days.
>>"The increasing omnipresence of the Internet will allow >>for the publishing of thought pretty much as it occurs."
>Do you really think that will be an improvement? I mean >sure it would make an interesting experiment, a "digital >stream-of-consciousness," but it will surely make a worse >web log. - ericost
I know this is odd but, in an interesting interview of comedian, Dave Foley (NewsRadio, Kids In the Hall), Foley speaks about using an "audio interface to the internet" and a "collective intellect".
An excerpt...
All human beings will have access to the same base of information. Now people won’t make equal use of that information. Smart people will still be smart people and dumb people will still be dumb people, but dumb people will be able to tell you who the 13th President of the United States was. It will still be necessary for people to be intelligent and creative, and make use of information in an intelligent and creative way.
I think the man hit the nail on the head, and there will still be a way for the cream to rise to the top.
posted by jasonshellen at 5:12 PM on January 19, 2001
>>"The increasing omnipresence of the Internet will allow >>for the publishing of thought pretty much as it occurs."
>Do you really think that will be an improvement? I mean >sure it would make an interesting experiment, a "digital >stream-of-consciousness," but it will surely make a worse >web log. - ericost
I know this is odd but, in an interesting interview of comedian, Dave Foley (NewsRadio, Kids In the Hall), Foley speaks about using an "audio interface to the internet" and a "collective intellect".
An excerpt...
All human beings will have access to the same base of information. Now people won’t make equal use of that information. Smart people will still be smart people and dumb people will still be dumb people, but dumb people will be able to tell you who the 13th President of the United States was. It will still be necessary for people to be intelligent and creative, and make use of information in an intelligent and creative way.
I think the man hit the nail on the head, and there will still be a way for the cream to rise to the top.
posted by jasonshellen at 5:12 PM on January 19, 2001
The thing I liked about this article when I saw it was it's the first press report I've seen that correctly credits Peter for coining the word "blog" itself.
posted by anildash at 5:52 PM on January 19, 2001
posted by anildash at 5:52 PM on January 19, 2001
I remember that Dave Winer mentioned the Netscape's What's New pages in December 1999 while he was doing some research for the Weblogs.com FAQ (he credited metafilter.com for the link to the Netscape archvies) .
The FAQ was updated on November 6, 2000 with a link to some archived pages on w3.org:
"The first weblog was the first website, the site built by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. From this page TBL pointed to all the new sites as they came online."
posted by tomalak at 6:05 PM on January 19, 2001
The FAQ was updated on November 6, 2000 with a link to some archived pages on w3.org:
"The first weblog was the first website, the site built by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. From this page TBL pointed to all the new sites as they came online."
posted by tomalak at 6:05 PM on January 19, 2001
>1945 = Vannevar Bush's "memex"
OK...if we're gonna stretch the weblog paradigm back to 1945, then why stop there? Lest we forget the wunderkammer comparison made by Julian Dibbell of FEED?
>webchick: I've never seen anything to
>substantiate the rumor that TBL ran a
>weblog. If you have even anecdotal
>evidence, I'd be interested to see it.
Well, I'm a stickler for hard evidence as well. That's why I was digging around in the W3C archives. Despite numerous targeted searches, I could find little to substantiate the claim, which was based on the recollection of someone I greatly respect (and would know about such things). I wound up citing the "What's New" page in the piece I was writing, as a result of my scanty findings. Perhaps someone else will have better luck?
(But, as someone else in this thread noted, this is an exercise in hair-splitting. :-)
posted by webchick at 6:06 PM on January 19, 2001
OK...if we're gonna stretch the weblog paradigm back to 1945, then why stop there? Lest we forget the wunderkammer comparison made by Julian Dibbell of FEED?
>webchick: I've never seen anything to
>substantiate the rumor that TBL ran a
>weblog. If you have even anecdotal
>evidence, I'd be interested to see it.
Well, I'm a stickler for hard evidence as well. That's why I was digging around in the W3C archives. Despite numerous targeted searches, I could find little to substantiate the claim, which was based on the recollection of someone I greatly respect (and would know about such things). I wound up citing the "What's New" page in the piece I was writing, as a result of my scanty findings. Perhaps someone else will have better luck?
(But, as someone else in this thread noted, this is an exercise in hair-splitting. :-)
posted by webchick at 6:06 PM on January 19, 2001
>"The first weblog was the first website,
>the site built by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN.
>From this page TBL pointed to all the new
>sites as they came online."
Yeah...I found a similar quote from Winer in my search...but this retrofitting of the term "weblog" seems silly at times: at what point does a "website" cross that magic line and become a "weblog"? And what the heck was the matter with the term "website" anyway? It worked fine for TBL. :-)
posted by webchick at 6:21 PM on January 19, 2001
>the site built by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN.
>From this page TBL pointed to all the new
>sites as they came online."
Yeah...I found a similar quote from Winer in my search...but this retrofitting of the term "weblog" seems silly at times: at what point does a "website" cross that magic line and become a "weblog"? And what the heck was the matter with the term "website" anyway? It worked fine for TBL. :-)
posted by webchick at 6:21 PM on January 19, 2001
tomalak: With all due respect, I believe I was the first to make the connection between weblogs and the What's New page, back in May 1999 (first entry on the page).
The page Dave linked to (since moved here) was just a mirror archive of the NCSA page. (The page is dated June 1993, but Netscape didn't come into existence until early '94.)
I don't see anything webloggy about the W3C archive page Dave linked to -- no reverse-chron, no indication of daily updates, only a couple of links. I think we can safely write this one off as an artifact of Dave's famously, er, idiosyncratic perception.
posted by jjg at 7:19 PM on January 19, 2001
The page Dave linked to (since moved here) was just a mirror archive of the NCSA page. (The page is dated June 1993, but Netscape didn't come into existence until early '94.)
I don't see anything webloggy about the W3C archive page Dave linked to -- no reverse-chron, no indication of daily updates, only a couple of links. I think we can safely write this one off as an artifact of Dave's famously, er, idiosyncratic perception.
posted by jjg at 7:19 PM on January 19, 2001
Sorry, I wasn't trying to infer that he was the first to make the connection... I just remembered reading something about TBL and "weblogs" and I came across the May 1999 entry while searching on Google which pointed me to the FAQ and the TBL link.
posted by tomalak at 11:51 PM on January 19, 2001
posted by tomalak at 11:51 PM on January 19, 2001
I don't think we have to play a game of Twister (fun though that may be, RED LEFT HAND!) to get older sites or ideas to conform to the modern definition of weblog. The point isn't that there were always weblogs, just that the weblog evolved out of a certain number of predecessor types including the What's New, What's Cool, and personal home page. Just because there's a huge gray area doesn't mean we can't differentiate.
I hope everyone above is merely reminiscing nostalgically rather than trying to draw links in the sand, as it were.
posted by dhartung at 1:03 AM on January 20, 2001
I hope everyone above is merely reminiscing nostalgically rather than trying to draw links in the sand, as it were.
posted by dhartung at 1:03 AM on January 20, 2001
Lest we forget the wunderkammer comparison made by Julian Dibbell of FEED?
If we're going to stretch the metaphor to before the age of computers :) I've always been struck by similarities in the format of weblogs - topical observations; semi-journalistic perspective; closed, circular readership - and the Pillow Books of Heian (11th century) Japan.
posted by twitch at 3:44 AM on January 20, 2001
If we're going to stretch the metaphor to before the age of computers :) I've always been struck by similarities in the format of weblogs - topical observations; semi-journalistic perspective; closed, circular readership - and the Pillow Books of Heian (11th century) Japan.
posted by twitch at 3:44 AM on January 20, 2001
Update!
>I don't see anything webloggy about
>the W3C archive page Dave linked to --
>no reverse-chron, no indication of daily
>updates, only a couple of links.
Since I haven't observed posting every day - or even linking in every post - as a universally accepted practice in the nascent concept of "being webloggy" (why do I have this urge to hum "feeling groovy?" :-), I humbly provide the following links for your amusement/consideration/edification:
from 1990 ...
from 1991 ...
from 1992 ...
(OK...so, like, two of them are feature/bug lists, but who's to say someone can't keep a web log...or weblog, if you prefer...on software bugs? Or important upcoming conferences? To each his own, right?)
And since Vannevar Bush's ideas, and the concept of trailblazing, are more broadly associated with hypertext, lets agree that his legacy has already been recorded in the annals of history (as well as TBL's, for that matter).
>I think we can safely write this one
>off as an artifact of Dave's famously,
>er, idiosyncratic perception...
(FWIW, Dave was not the one who mentioned the TBL connection to me, although my friend had a decidedly different slant on making the connection. And as far as being idiosyncratic goes, it takes all kinds to make a world. :-)
"Doot-in-doo-doo, feelin' groovy..."
posted by webchick at 9:11 AM on January 20, 2001
>I don't see anything webloggy about
>the W3C archive page Dave linked to --
>no reverse-chron, no indication of daily
>updates, only a couple of links.
Since I haven't observed posting every day - or even linking in every post - as a universally accepted practice in the nascent concept of "being webloggy" (why do I have this urge to hum "feeling groovy?" :-), I humbly provide the following links for your amusement/consideration/edification:
from 1990 ...
from 1991 ...
from 1992 ...
(OK...so, like, two of them are feature/bug lists, but who's to say someone can't keep a web log...or weblog, if you prefer...on software bugs? Or important upcoming conferences? To each his own, right?)
And since Vannevar Bush's ideas, and the concept of trailblazing, are more broadly associated with hypertext, lets agree that his legacy has already been recorded in the annals of history (as well as TBL's, for that matter).
>I think we can safely write this one
>off as an artifact of Dave's famously,
>er, idiosyncratic perception...
(FWIW, Dave was not the one who mentioned the TBL connection to me, although my friend had a decidedly different slant on making the connection. And as far as being idiosyncratic goes, it takes all kinds to make a world. :-)
"Doot-in-doo-doo, feelin' groovy..."
posted by webchick at 9:11 AM on January 20, 2001
>...recorded in the annals of history
>(as well as TBL's, for that matter)...
Small correction...not that TBL won't continue to make history. Now, *that* would be presumptuous... :-)
posted by webchick at 9:26 AM on January 20, 2001
>(as well as TBL's, for that matter)...
Small correction...not that TBL won't continue to make history. Now, *that* would be presumptuous... :-)
posted by webchick at 9:26 AM on January 20, 2001
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posted by rodii at 1:41 PM on January 19, 2001