Transcript Record of Coming to the South

The Blogosphere
IMKE CSC2006
Kaido Kikkas
“We blog”
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The favoured pastime of the 21st century
On an average, over 15,000 new weblogs are
created per day - a new blog every 5.8 seconds and over 275,000 individual posts every day
(Technorati)
blog.tr.ee has 997 blogs registered (26.10.06)
But people actually started similar things long
ago
Chronicles
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Records of things that happen
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Nabonidus in Mesopotamia
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the Chronicles in the Old Testament
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Hendrick the Lett, Balthazar Russow
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Typically does not focus on certain events
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Usually quite subjective views
Commonplace books
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In England from the 15th century (paper became
affordable)
Large personal scrapbooks with very diverse
content – from words of wisdom to recipes.
Mostly used for philosophical thoughts and
quotes
What was done was essentially sampling – the
'mashup' seen in today's networked world
Diary
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Personal narrative, often meant for author only
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Early examples include
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Record of Coming to the South – the travel diary of
Li Ao, a Chinese envoy travelling in Southern China
in 809 AD
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the personal diaries of Japanese nobility
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Often considered valuable historical accounts
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See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diarists
The Community Memory
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A terminal-based communication system that was
active in San Francisco in 1972-74
Used the XDM-940 computer located in San
Francisco, the first and most famous terminal was
located in a music shop in Berkeley
ASR-33 teletype, 110 baud phone line
Allowed leaving messages and searching them by
keywords
Benway, the first “network personality”
BBS
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January 1978, Ward Christensen
CBBS – dial-in system using a single 110-baud
modem
Modem speeds improved (300, 1200, 2800... up
to the 33,6K and 56,6K)
The prime time was during the 80s, but exists up
to today
Fidonet
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A type of BBS-based network
Based on zones – all nodes exchanged their
content daily (during the Zone Mail Hour); in this
sense similar to Usenet news servers
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Allowed NetMail and file transfer by attachments
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Better BBS-s had multiple lines and modems
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Was popular in Estonia at the end of the Soviet
period
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relatively uncontrolled
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free local calls (flat rate)
The Web
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Tim Berners-Lee, CERN 1991
The first web page http://www.w3.org/History/19921103hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
(includes a sort of a blog!)
Free protocol with extensive possibilities => a
rapid spread all over the world to the ubiquity of
today
A side issue: Gopher vs WWW
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Gopher: Minnesota University 1991
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A simple menu-based hierarchical system
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Started earlier than the Web and spread rapidly
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1993 – MU starts its licensing program, 2 months
later Berners-Lee declares the Web free
WWW was a more advanced protocol, but
without the licensing change, Gopher would have
likely lasted much longer
Early bloggers
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Claudio Pinhanez, Open Diary in MIT 1994-96
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Justin Hall, Swarthmore College
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the Web Ethics course
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Justin's Links from the Underground, a combination
of a Web guide and a very personal diary
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1996 – the book 24 Hours in Cyberspace
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1998 – launch of Xanga.com and Diarist.net
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1999 – Brad Graham uses the term
“blogosphere”
Escribitionism
Evolution
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1997 – Jorn Barger uses “weblog” (to log his
surfing) on his site robotwisdom.com
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1999 – Peter Merholz, “we blog” => “(to) blog”
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New additions:
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permalinks
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blogroll
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trackback
Blogs start influencing traditional media
Technical aspects
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The free software breakthrough – LAMP stack: it
is possible to launch an Intenet server with low
costs
Lots of online services – prices were sensible due
to market pressure
Lots of dedicated free/open-source software –
Wordpress, Textpattern and many others
Syndication
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A vital component of the blog explosion
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RSS and Atom – end of the 90s
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Allows consolidated tracking of a large number
of blogs
Lots of free solutions available
Types of blog
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By media:
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“classic” blog
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linklog
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photoblog
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videoblog (vlog)
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moblog
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By genre – general or dedicated
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By status – personal, corporate(internal, external)
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An interesting combo: bliki (wikiblog, bloki)
Blogs vs traditional media
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Mixed feelings
Some journalists also blog – more freedom of
expression, no bureaucracy or censorship
Fear of competition – may also short-circuit
attempts of various media spins
Increasingly a political tool (“miserable failure”
in Google!)
Cultural aspect
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Some otherwise rather closed societies have blogs
as a major source of (relatively) liberal
discussion. E.g. Iran and China
The existence of the Bible in a national language
as a landmark is not alone anymore – the same
role is increasingly played by native blogs and
Wikipedia
Legal issues
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2002 – Heather Armstrong is “dooced” by her
employer for remarks in her blog
various cases of high-level persecution based on
blog entries
Owner of Dallas Mavericks was fined for
criticizing NBA on his blog
An American stewardess was fired after
publishing some objected photos in her blog
...and of course, there is the everlasting IP stuff
Summary
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A combination of human need of expression
(aggravated by the growing alienation seen in
Western world) and modern technical tools to
allow it
Can be a powerful cultural and political tool