![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/blgicon.jpg\")
What
\n is a blog? Deeper minds than mine have pondered that
\n one, and far from reaching a consensus, the commentators, or rather practicing
\n bloggers, keep expanding the blogosphere and pushing the envelope of
\n what can be
\n considered a blog. Nevertheless, since I am going to be leading some
\n Beginner’s Sessions at the upcoming BloggerCon, it seems incumbent on
\n me to formulate my own definition.<\/p>\n
The problem is that every time a new definition is formulated, a dozen One dictionary <\/a>defines You can’t really say a blog needs links either, because some blogs are Russ Traditional prose, from the Greek dramas and the Roman histories, tells Exceptional and iconoclastic writers have chafed at these temporal restrictions Blogs, however, follow a chronological order which is neither random This is not an incidental or unimportant difference. It alters Blogs are actually much more like the way we experience the world. They This is the way people live life. First in our hearts and minds is what In Somewhere in America, in Andalusia, What is a blog? Deeper minds than mine have pondered that one, and far from reaching a consensus, the commentators, or rather practicing bloggers, keep expanding the blogosphere and pushing the envelope of what can be considered a blog. Nevertheless, … Continue reading
\n new blogs pop up which don’t fit the definition, but which are definitely
\n blogs. The standard starting point is blogging pioneer Dave
\n Winer’s<\/a> definition
\n "The unedited voice of a person!" But seeing as the whole topic of editing
\n is one of the hot threads and themes anticipated at the conference,
\n and the Presidential campaign blogs are highly <\/em>edited, yet clearly
\n are blogs, it is hard to say that blogs are by nature unedited. In
\n addition, many of my favorite blogs, and some of the top blogs around,
\n are collaborative efforts – blogs like the Volokh
\n Conspiracy <\/a>and Boing
\n Boing<\/a> – without even venturing into the ongoing polemic over whether
\n WIKIs, which are DESIGNED so that anyone can post or edit content, are
\n really blogs.<\/p>\n
\n a blog as "A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts
\n and Web links " But frequency is a relative term, both in quality
\n and quantity (as Philip
\n Greenspun<\/a> puts in his header "an interesting
\n idea every three months; a posting every day") and some of my favorite
\n blogs are literally just links of lists, without any personal thoughts
\n attached to them at all. <\/p>\n
\n intensely personal windows into one person’s life without hyperlinks
\n to any other web sites, and yet they are definitely, even quintessentially,
\n blogs. Some blogs are all about images, others text, and still others
\n audio. <\/p>\n
\n Lipton<\/a> takes a more fundamental tack when he says, "A weblog is
\n just a web site organized by time." I think that this is getting close
\n to the core of what makes a weblog a weblog. But for me, the
\n crucial factor is that a blog is a web site organized in REVERSE chronological
\n order, and this makes all the difference in the world.<\/p>\n
\n stories in chronological order, from beginning to end. Books are made
\n to be read from beginning to end, and although creative writers are able
\n to play with time to some extent through flashbacks and other devices,
\n the nature of the technology (the printing press turning out thousands
\n of pre-written and edited volumes) dictated that literature and commentary
\n be read from the first page to the last.<\/p>\n
\n in form for years. Burroughs<\/a> and Kerouac<\/a> experimented
\n with a "cut-up" composition style in which they literally cut their writing
\n up into phrases
\n and sentences and then rearranged them at random to create a kind of
\n abstract stream of consciousness. The Argentinian writer Julio Cortezar wrote
\n a brilliant book called 62:
\n A Model Kit<\/a>, which consists of 62 unordered chapters which the reader
\n is invited to arrange in whatever order seems appropriate to create
\n a near infinite variety of permutations.<\/p>\n
\n nor abstract. It is simply straight chronological order IN REVERSE.
\n This is again a direct result of the technology used to create blogs,
\n and
\n defines their basic nature. A blog, if you read it every day, is an evolving,
\n unfolding story as seen through the eyes of the blogger, but to a new
\n reader it unfolds backwards as one reads down the page.<\/p>\n
\n the whole experience of writing and reading. It introduces an element
\n of spontaneity and wonder, because the reader realizes that NOT EVEN
\n THE WRITER knows how the story is going to come out. The suspense that
\n a good writer can generate in traditional literature is by its nature
\n ultimately ersatz, for while the reader may be in the dark, the ending
\n is preordained, and the writer knows all the time what is going to happen
\n next. This is not true in a blog.<\/p>\n
\n offer the opportunity to communicate experiences and commentary in a
\n much more realistic way, a way much more similar to the way that human
\n consciousness experiences the world. <\/p>\n
\n is happening RIGHT NOW. Available in some detail are the happenings
\n of the past few days, and they can be reviewed with little effort. The
\n rest of our thoughts and memories are stored in the mental archives,
\n where they can be retrieved with varying degrees of effort and accuracy
\n depending on factors like their age, significance and how clearly
\n we were thinking when the memories were laid down. Sort of like
\n a blog. <\/p>\n
\n the blogosphere Google has become our collective unconscious. It is
\n much more accurate and accessible than most people’s organic memories,
\n and this is sure to effect the evolution of the blogosphere as it ages
\n and grows. Personally, I believe that in addition to being a potentially
\n revolutionary method of distributing news and commentary, and a hell
\n of a lot of fun, blogging is an art form waiting for its first great
\n generation of practitioners. <\/p>\n
\n in Ankara there are young writers breathing in the rarified air of the
\n blogosphere, sucking up the words, images and ideas, and making the first
\n preliminary sketches of what will become awesome masterpieces of a new
\n kind of literature. In reverse chronological order.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"