On the Nature of Blog, Part 1

Ship's Blog, Stardate 200409.3: Mister Robertson reporting: Tricorder readings indicate that there are some 187 million ACTIVE users of Hotmail accounts on the web. That is Jon's piece of trivia for the day - and it is a sobering thought.

But it is not the subject of this two minutes. This two minutes is my FIRST reflection as to the nature of Blog. Over time, I may very well look back on this and think "what a load of rubbish" - someone might even comment to me "what a load of rubbish". We'll see. Only time will tell. 20/20 hindsight etc.

Blog. Web Log. A log on the web. A matter of record. I was thinking of a suitable non-web analog. A diary. A diary is usually private. Up until the point you die, or you publish it as memoirs, or you inadvertently leave it on the dining room table and your annoying sibling finds it and insists on reading it out to anyone who'll listen.

So whilst you can use it to, on a daily basis, record your thoughts and the happenings in your life, it is not quite a diary. It is more like published memoirs - only it happens instantly -and also globally.

Everything that goes in here is inherently PUBLIC. There is no permissions model that I have yet seen - although I could be wrong about this. I know that this system is not the only one in town either - there's www.blog.com, for example.

This is also a piece of supporting infrastructure that essentially delivers a blank canvas on which we can draw. What I mean is - at the moment, this Blog of mine is aimless, directionless, and random. It has no unified purpose or theme. Yet. Perhaps it will. Perhaps what Jon actually meant when I started this is that it should be a repository for common sense and sanity that pertains to our day-job, and the hopeless, feckless muppets that we sometimes encounter.

Sometimes, a Blog can capture and articulate a passion or hobby. One of my friends has an absolutely superb Blog - especially if you have an interest in ceramic art. If you want a case-study on how to use Blog to follow a theme and give life and public visibility to an artistic hobby, you really should check out Chantel's Blog here - http://www.blog.mweb.co.za/users/ceramicartist. Apart from anything else, Chantel shows how effectively photos can bring a Blog to life.

Is what you show here who you really are? Do you spill out your soul here? If 187 million of us have active Hotmail accounts, then what does that tell you about the "population" of the web? Is it 300-500 million people? A tenth of that? Double that? Who knows. The point is that, potentially, a lot of people could be reading that. And here I draw a comparison to presenting. Presenting to one person is easy - it is a "private conversation". Presenting to three people - especially when you are selling yourself - is quite hard. Presenting to 3-30 people can be challenging and daunting or easy - depends on the context. But presenting to 100+ people, in an auditorium, in the dark, with a microphone and spotlight - isn't so bad. I've done all these things, and the lesson is that presenting to a large group is completely impersonal. You don't get to make eye contact, there is very little chance of questions - you just do your thing. In that sense, it's easy. Here, I am presenting to a very large potential audience - or zero - which is probably closer to the mark! ;)

I could start pouring my heart out and revealing my inner soul, but I still think that it is largely in a vacuum and therefore impersonal. Could be completely wrong about this. Perhaps COMMENTS are the thing I've overlooked. I'll let you know when I get one! ;)

Two minutes are up - I'm outta here. Have a good one.