Why I Hate Personal Weblogs

Why I Hate Personal Weblogs: "What is a weblog? Well, a weblog (or 'blog' in the slang of the afflicted) is like a public journal. An autobiography of sorts, a weblog is an intimate look at the thoughts of an individual person, written from the perspective of that person, updated regularly, created as a publicly browsable web page. The first weblogs were created by simple web folk in the late 1990s to keep track of interesting things they found on the web. Basically lists of links, they were a precursor to modern web-news sites like Slashdot.org. Many of these offered personal editorials from their link compilers/authors. These weblogs were pioneering a new idea of personal opinion sites that would someday blossom into a virus like phenomenon of 'blogs', where hoards of nobodies regurgitated their every thought into the digital void. At some point in this primordial weblog soup, the online diary emerged onto the scene.

Some of the first really useful 'online diary' type sites I remember seeing were created by key software developers of rather famous software projects to announce daily or weekly progress on their work to their eagerly awaiting audiences in an effort to curb the incessant emails asking them for progress reports, current status of bugs, etc. They could simply point these eager beavers to their weblog and tell them to follow along. To facilitate their own weblogs, many developers and webloggers created rudimentary weblog programs that allowed them (and anyone else) to easily create their online diaries; this was another large step toward the weblog explosion. Other legitimate uses of weblogs grew quickly and the distinction between online diary and weblog became less distinct as link lists evolved into internet news sites. Large-scale weblogs tracked the progress of National Geographic teams in the Sahara, the status of international rally races, the daily lives of astronauts; smaller-scale weblogs were created by other celebrity figures in ord"

sedikit cerita tentang blog, cerita sejarah dan sudut pandang yang baik juga untuk di lihat sih.

Tapi pandangannya sangat elitis, dan lupa pada kekuatan demokratisasi dari teknologi informasi bernama internet ini. Pada akhirnya kan para pengguna internet yang akan menentukan apa yang mereka sukai dan tidak. Kita perlu menunggu beberapa waktu lagi untuk bisa melihat bagaimana bentuknya kelak. Apakah seperti dot com yang begitu meghebohkan dan ambruk, itu pun tidak membuat internet ambruk, dan tetap saja banyak situs internet baru yang bermunculan. Walau tidak gegap gempita di pasar modal yang dulu menyambut dot com sebagai peluang meledaknya investasi dan perekonomian.

Mungkin kekuatan utama internet justru dengan mengembalikan kemampuan/posisi tawar pada massa, bukan dalam terminologi atau perspektif pasar. Tetapi kemampuan menciptakan komunitas2 dengan solidaritas baru, yang tidak terutama di dorong oleh masalah ekonomi dan moneter semata.