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Growing web-wise with weblogs
Everybody has something to say, as they say, is all right. But, every body trying to tell what they have in mind is a different thing. Internet has made it easier to let know what people want others to be acquainted with, even if others do not want it. Since the advent of the new electronic medium, after email, instant messaging and the internet’s original bulletin boards called UseNet, interneters have now started taking advantage of blogging.
It is a trend that appeared as another internet mainstream in 1997 when the mind-boggling term weblog was coined by Jorn Barger. The growth of blogs, short for weblogs, mushroomed in 1999 when Pitas launched the first free build your own blog tool followed by many others.
Blog writer called bloggers now farm a very well populated fraternal association Web-wise and the interesting thing is that the phenomenon, which experts see as a new powerful component of the internet, is also taking start among local users.
In the first place there are lots of diverse considerations that induce people into telling their feelings about things: observations, obsessions, events, ideas, issues and problems. Some are pricked by their strong sense of right and wrong to raise their voice for or against a cause of their own or of their societal interest, while some others do it to cover up some disrepute. Then there are those who do it for amusement, and the ones for whom it is a life purist or a career.
Blogging caught the attention of internet users as a source to latest news when blogger journalists had provided constant coverage without delaying the news till they went through editorial processes and appeared on the other conventional means like television, news websites and newspapers (recent Iraq War is one case in point).
Suitability
Due to openness of the system, advertisers, spamers and sexual predators also started making use of the new internet draw like they are using email, chatrooms and UseNet and rendering them practically useless for all other genuine users. Ambitious business and educational plans have also been based on blogs.
But what blogs best suit for? In the light of own environment one can deviate from internet convention while answering this question. Blogs do not necessarily have to be a classic collection of links to things out on the World Wide Web alone. Instead they are ideal as inclusive platforms for closely knit communities; sharing things of common interest not found on the Web, are those found in local Web contents and in so far more obscure corners of the Web.
Given the practical utility, economy and instant nature, blogs can be customized to suit our own milieu. Over 95 per cent of the knowledge is still accumulated in printed materials which is yet not on the World Wide Web. It is going to take some time, if at all it ever is, when every thing becomes available on the Web.
Blog writers can share their knowledge better if they post summaries and old style references to what they read and find consequential. They may also put their original work there, not to substitute but to supplement their purpose. This may be another way to promote knowledge and blogs are the best suited to do that. The ironic counter point is that most of us consider the remaining five per cent that is readily available on the Web as a whole and miss so much in the process. This is a dangerous tendency. If we keep taking the five per cent as a whole, we may be poised to lose what has been produced by earlier generations.
Search any subject and one finds rich resources, mostly of foreign origin. This indicates that there are less local contents on the Web. But useful things have been written by local scholars, intellectuals and writers as well. Place all those on the Web duly indexed, they too can emerge in the search results any where. To some extent this gap can be filled in by bloggers. In addition, less obvious but useful corners of the Web should be explored by bloggers and shared. This in any way does not imply that the contents of foreign origin should not be utilized nor is it suggested to mar their importance. On the other hand, it is to make blogging exercise purposeful and help the local bloggers to be heard in this din.
Internet and related technologies are for those who really have something to say. Some ways to ensure that the postings remain free of personal obsessions, insanity and e-marketing nauseam will go a long way to make them increasingly useful. Improvement in blog search will also do a lot of good to popularize the trend.
Blog subjects
Blogs are particularly suitable for writers and literati. Oracle e-business magazine Profit in August 2003 issue published one story entitled The Tale of the Promiscuous Software Application drawing technological lessons from ancient philosophers and literary classics to contemporary literature. The writer Katheryn Potterf, Senior editor for Oracle Publishing and PhD in Comparative Literature, starts with Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zi (circa fourth century BC whose work is certainly not on the Web) and comes down to Madam Bovary fame French writer Gustave Flaubert. Not blog but it shows how Information Technology professional are benefiting from literature. On one local literary blog, I found summaries of what a blogger had been reading offline instead of internet links strung there. I found mentions of every one from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan to Mufti Sadar ud Din Azurda to Mukhtar Masood.
More and more people have begun self publishing their own weblogs. Lately, I have been surfing local blog sites that I could find and paying attention to what they have to offer. Publication, such as SPIDER also has joined in setting a new trend here and many avid local bloggers are getting together there.
I included blogging in my online activities and began mine only recently; mainly not to be left behind. Soon I realized that one has to have a better purpose to sustain over a period of time let alone get noticed and read. In a desire to share my thoughts and opinions with whomever reading, I also told about my blog(s) to my inner circle sending them links and also announced them to a number of email lists. Leaving aside a few exceptions, every one asked one question: What is a blog? Not having been able to update regularly and often felling dried out for ideas and what to say to make a difference was only one of the frustrations that compelled me to leave all and try to manage some more purposefully.
On the other hand, blogging did give a boost to my ego and I found that my own interests are getting realigned. I started forming opinion on common and some not so common issues. Now when I log on to my mostly abandoned blogs they sometime seem intimidating to me but sometime it is a sheer pleasure, finding myself face to face with what I once thought. Sometimes I understand myself. Other times I find myself desperate. Certain remarks seem ridiculous to me now. Others make me happy. “I was right about that,” I sometimes say to myself.
Like email address, every one who has an opinion and the internet access is going to have blog one day. Small voices do make a difference some time.
The writer
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