About Blogs

As I have yet to get my textbook yet I can only rely on the notes I took in class to remind myself of what we learned in class today. Problem is, having 2 classes back-to-back taught by the same teacher is pretty confusing. Everything starts getting melting together in your brain. Is that good? It might actually be proof that I have more than 2 brain cells to rub together.

On to the serious stuff:

Kevin talked briefly about the history of the web and how it has evolved from Web1.0 to Web2.0. He then mentioned the abuse of the latter term with the 'invention' of Web3.0. It made me wonder if such a thing as Web3.0 is possible in the future. With passive, and now active web, could we possibly push the envelope and make it more? Perhaps, interactive? Or may be we are already at that stage. Then again, it is possible that 'interactive' falls under 'active', for it takes two hands to clap just as it takes two 'active' participants to 'interact'.

He also defined what a blog is, and why individuals and companies use blogs as a form of communication. These were simple enough to understand but they did not address the effects of blogs on their audience. While it is obvious that blogs have supplanted the personal diary, and possibly the corporate newsletter, they are in essence, the same words on a screen. Certainly, the web and consequently blogs are very much more accessible than hard copy documents; and it is my opinion that this greater accessibility and the increasing number of blogs - in particular blogs about some one's life, are correlated. Together, these factors have possibly made us more voyeuristic than before. After all, we read the personal blogs of people who are total strangers to us!

The blog is no longer just a way for friends to keep in touch with the goings-on in each other's lives but an open window into the other's personal thoughts and feelings. Imagine reading some one's personal diary! Of course, it can be said that personal blogs are not all that personal since people tend to censor what they write when they know they have an audience.

Regardless, as food for thought, we should all reflect on how blogs - personal, corporate, or otherwise, have affected us.