Blog about Blog
Blog. Interesting term. For this first blog, I think I will talk about my thoughts about blogs.
Living day to day in the internet publishing business, I get to think about electronic publishing quite a bit. Sometimes even philosophically. And truthfully, this blog is really more about publishing, or the access to it, than about the history or some other view of blogs, per se.
I remember when one of my friends bought one of the very first Apple Macintosh computers. I never even saw the machine, but I did see his weekly self-published newsletter, The Fayetteville Free Press. In it, he wrote all the content, made the graphics, gathered his own news, expressed his views in editorials. His disclaimer: "If you don't like it, get your own damn press". It was very popular, and he printed off a one or two page issue every so often, and dropped them off near the newspaper racks around town. We all loved it. It looked professional (Mac graphics as opposed to hand layouts like the rest of us would have to do if we wanted to do the same thing).
One thing that amazed me was that this looked like freedom. Compared to the hassle of actually getting a -real- newspaper press run, which kept all of us from being able to cost effectively express ourselves, this was amazing to me. I could see the potential of unlimited artistic and journalistic expression, and a new era about to unfold. If I was to be a writer, and I was debating that as a career, I was now unbridled, and my outlet of expression endless.
What more could you want, professional looking press and you didn't have to sell advertising if you didn't want to! Of course, my friend was a witty writer, which made people actually read the thing. That is something I think about these days: content. But back to the story. It seemed that the limits on getting creative writing published had just been broken wide open, all because of a little Macintosh.
And all of this when the ARPANET was still a little experiment linking a few university mainframes. IP addresses had not been invented. The phrase "Internet" had yet to be coined. I was impressed by the fact that my buddy could publish his thoughts in a few days of running around town with a backseat full of paper. Now, you can publish to the entire world in less than one second. Back then I may have dreamed of such a thing, but I certainly forgot about it before morning came. If my friend could have somehow miraculously dropped of his little paper in very town in the United States, he would have been famous! Most everyone would have at least heard of him and the paper. If only there was some way to do that! As it was, he was locally famous, and didn't seem to mind a bit.
Well, here we all are now, with the ability to publish our brains out, and all we have to do is get someone anywhere in the world to read it, because we can put it out there. I have to think, why would anyone read -my- little ranting, when there is so much out there? Well, I suppose it better be some interesting ranting. So we come back to content. My friend with the Mac would have had some readers even if his writing sucked for one simple reason: that's all that was out there to read. Tonight, I could search and read on the Internet all night long and never click the same link twice, and never leave my chair.
But I could miss that one (or more realistically, those million) articles out there that would really knock my socks off, simply because there is so much out there. So it seems to me that the freedom of unlimited publishing has a very hard and sad limit after all. There is only so much a guy or gal can sift through. Some of the best guerilla writers may still go unnoticed by the masses they seek to contact. Some aspiring genius talent will still take a look at this mess and give up before they start. We're back were we started, unable to publish because of the complexity of the process.
So what will be the "Macintosh", the new idea or technical thingy, that breaks these limits wide open for the next generation of expression?
As always, good content (aka writing) can get you a readership, if folks can find you in or on the net. And perhaps now there are less politics involved, meaning you may be able to get worldwide attention without the resources of a real publisher (or learning how to trick search engines to put your pages at the beginning of result lists). But the bottom line is we are still restrained, and life hasn't really changed all that much. In a way, we just have more tv channels all tuned in and turned on at the same time. And as humans, we are growing to cope and live with the noise.
Living day to day in the internet publishing business, I get to think about electronic publishing quite a bit. Sometimes even philosophically. And truthfully, this blog is really more about publishing, or the access to it, than about the history or some other view of blogs, per se.
I remember when one of my friends bought one of the very first Apple Macintosh computers. I never even saw the machine, but I did see his weekly self-published newsletter, The Fayetteville Free Press. In it, he wrote all the content, made the graphics, gathered his own news, expressed his views in editorials. His disclaimer: "If you don't like it, get your own damn press". It was very popular, and he printed off a one or two page issue every so often, and dropped them off near the newspaper racks around town. We all loved it. It looked professional (Mac graphics as opposed to hand layouts like the rest of us would have to do if we wanted to do the same thing).
One thing that amazed me was that this looked like freedom. Compared to the hassle of actually getting a -real- newspaper press run, which kept all of us from being able to cost effectively express ourselves, this was amazing to me. I could see the potential of unlimited artistic and journalistic expression, and a new era about to unfold. If I was to be a writer, and I was debating that as a career, I was now unbridled, and my outlet of expression endless.
What more could you want, professional looking press and you didn't have to sell advertising if you didn't want to! Of course, my friend was a witty writer, which made people actually read the thing. That is something I think about these days: content. But back to the story. It seemed that the limits on getting creative writing published had just been broken wide open, all because of a little Macintosh.
And all of this when the ARPANET was still a little experiment linking a few university mainframes. IP addresses had not been invented. The phrase "Internet" had yet to be coined. I was impressed by the fact that my buddy could publish his thoughts in a few days of running around town with a backseat full of paper. Now, you can publish to the entire world in less than one second. Back then I may have dreamed of such a thing, but I certainly forgot about it before morning came. If my friend could have somehow miraculously dropped of his little paper in very town in the United States, he would have been famous! Most everyone would have at least heard of him and the paper. If only there was some way to do that! As it was, he was locally famous, and didn't seem to mind a bit.
Well, here we all are now, with the ability to publish our brains out, and all we have to do is get someone anywhere in the world to read it, because we can put it out there. I have to think, why would anyone read -my- little ranting, when there is so much out there? Well, I suppose it better be some interesting ranting. So we come back to content. My friend with the Mac would have had some readers even if his writing sucked for one simple reason: that's all that was out there to read. Tonight, I could search and read on the Internet all night long and never click the same link twice, and never leave my chair.
But I could miss that one (or more realistically, those million) articles out there that would really knock my socks off, simply because there is so much out there. So it seems to me that the freedom of unlimited publishing has a very hard and sad limit after all. There is only so much a guy or gal can sift through. Some of the best guerilla writers may still go unnoticed by the masses they seek to contact. Some aspiring genius talent will still take a look at this mess and give up before they start. We're back were we started, unable to publish because of the complexity of the process.
So what will be the "Macintosh", the new idea or technical thingy, that breaks these limits wide open for the next generation of expression?
As always, good content (aka writing) can get you a readership, if folks can find you in or on the net. And perhaps now there are less politics involved, meaning you may be able to get worldwide attention without the resources of a real publisher (or learning how to trick search engines to put your pages at the beginning of result lists). But the bottom line is we are still restrained, and life hasn't really changed all that much. In a way, we just have more tv channels all tuned in and turned on at the same time. And as humans, we are growing to cope and live with the noise.
posted by Keith at 7:28 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home