The comments made by Will Richardson in “The Future of Blogs” encouraged me to respond with my own musings on the topic.
I have been reflecting for some time on the similarities of Blogs and Blogging with the phenomena of CB Radio of the 1970s. Actually, there are some significant similarities between the phenomena that I will call the “CB Radio Craze” of the 1970s, and the Blogging of today. Most of you are of course too young to remember those days. Rather than bore you with my history from that period, I suggest you check Wikipedia for a nice round description of what I am referring to.
Both CB Radio and Blogs are technological methods used by the general population for communicating information quickly and somewhat globally. CB Radio came as a solution to the public’s communication needs at a time before cellular telephones and at a price much more affordable to the average person who often lacked the extensive skills necessary to an Amateur Radio operator (or Ham), the prevailing two-way radio technology of the time. For the price of a relatively inexpensive transceiver – or even a walkie-talkie – one could be “on the air” with relative ease. Like the differences between having a complete website or a blog – the cost of hosting, the requisite knowledge of HTML/CSS and design - versus the usually freely hosted blog, with easy set up and minimal skill requirement other than knowing how to write, the blog is an everyman solution.
Both Bloggers and CB Radio users quickly adopted the use of slang terms alien to the non-acquainted including hidden identities - aliases – or “handles” in the CB vernacular – along with special terminology. In the 1970s, even the First Lady, Betty Ford, was known by the handle “First Mamma”. Blogging involves equally esoteric terms such as RSS feeds, trackbacks and FOAF Generation.
Technology based communication does garner the user a certain amount of exclusiveness over its more pedestrian counterparts. Indeed CB Radio and Blogs both involve the creation of special communities. Bloggers can invite input from the general blogosphere or choose only to hear from a more exclusive group of “MyFriends” or “people lists.” In both the CB Radio and Blog worlds, the commentary is there for all to hear or see even if the correspondence is intended for a smaller audience. But I suggest it is the exclusivity of the communication that is the attraction for many.
Both the CB Radio and Blog technologies perpetuate the good, the bad, and the ugly of humankind. There are those who would follow the rules and those who abused them. Indeed, technology has always been used by the deviant and the sublime. I personally recall warnings to not trust the “people you meet” on the CB airways as they might want to commit ill will. The recent warnings of the dangers of the blogosphere are all too familiar.
This analogy is not intended to suggest that the days of blogging are numbered; although that might be the case. But rather, I suggest we have been down this road before.
If asked directly “what is the future of blogging?” I would be quick to point out that I suspect that Blogging will soon be morphed into some other technology and be perhaps unrecognizable within some period time. We may soon be looking back nostalgically at this period – “remember those things called blogs? They were so quaint.”
This transformation is already happening. “Podcasting” (an equally unfortunate term) is growing rapidly and I expect that some form of video casting will be the next hottest thing. All it takes is bandwidth and someone figuring out how to make money from it all. And, if you haven’t figured it out yet, the key to blogging and podcasting is not the simple technology of posting information, it’s the unique method of feeding and casting that makes it all so special. And we have just begun to experiment with this service. That, my friends, is the future.
I personally think a Blog, perhaps more accurately called a “web journal,” is nothing more than a writing instrument, the 21st Century equivalent of the cave wall that our ancestors used as the tableau for their scenes of the ancient and often frightening world around them. And like those primeval cave dwellers, reading too much into the content can be risky. I think the analogy of the typical MySpace website being similar to a teenager’s bedroom is apt. If you go in there, be prepared to be grossed out.
As to the educational value of the Blog - as I have stated before - any technology that gets kids writing can’t be bad. But the value is only enhanced if the author allows his or her creation to be critiqued and perhaps even graded. And whether teachers do this or others bloggers communicate dismissal by eschewing the content, the writer gets the message. The blocking of blog sites by schools is tantamount to taking the pens away from the students. Remember that delightful scene in Jean Shepherd’s “A Christmas Story” when Miss Shields confiscates the “false teeth” from the entire class one morning and deposits them into a bottomless drawer filled with other kid stuff? Same thing.
To suggest that Blogs are bad or evil is simply ludicrous. If you give a kid a pen he can use it to finish his homework in a nice neat spiral bound notebook, or take the pen and write crude comments about the principal on the walls of a school bathroom stall. The web journal is no more, no less. To punish by removing access to the instrument is foolish.
So, I am not concerned by the furor over MySpace and the corruption of the minds of today’s youth. Kids have been finding ways to communicate to the world in many and varied ways across the ages, and they’ve just found one that relatively few adults understand and even fewer adults know how to access, so it makes it all the sweeter.
~John Brandt
