A Blogging We Will Go

Blogging has certainly become a rapidly growing phenomenon. Created from the words "weB LOG", it is a modern day journaling of the authors thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Interestingly enough, blogging is actually more like a fad than you think. The reason I say this is because it was actually very popular at a previous time, like yo-yoing...then died off for a few decades or so, only to come back full force.

Back then, it was called a billboard. The internet was new and web pages were no where near as extensive as they are now. Computers could barely keep up with today's standards for graphic rendering. In fact, it didn't matter anyway because monitors were monochrome (one colour, such as white on black or orange on black). One reason the internet was created was as a way for scientists to 'post' their findings and allowed other scientists in another geographic area to read those findings and post their comments and theories. These postings were called 'Billboards" and they were used very much the way that blogging is done today. Simple text posted on a site and open to public review and scrutiny by way of comments.

The strangest part is that I am old enough to remember billboards, how they lost interest to html based webpages and IM services, and now returned to blogging...and yet I have only recently entered my 30's. Technology sure does go fast.

Now that the history lesson is over, the whole reason I started this blog was to express how open people have become using technology and yet how closed off and private that same person can be in public. Blogging has been taken by most of the first world as a new fad of journaling their deepest feelings. Feelings that once would be written down in a book and then locked with a key and hidden from siblings and parents are now being published for any and all people who know how to access the internet. It is still being kept locked to a degree by the anonymity of their blog handle, yet their closest friends and family all know who that handle refers to, so is it really such a secret?

I have heard and even experienced how much easier it is to write my feelings down during an IM with someone. You feel a little safer because the other person can't read your face and neither can you read theirs. It is a security blanket of sorts. I remember reading science fiction novels about what virtual reality would be like. You put on a headset and gloves and you can meet people from around the world, but change your appearance to that other person...all from the comfort of your livingroom. You could be skinny, muscular, and wearing a tuxedo, while you are actually wearing nothing but your pj's. Same thing with blogging now. We can be in any state we like as we write our thoughts. At the same time, we can saturate those thoughts with anything we want; revealing the truth about ourselves or by wearing a 'costume' of sorts, as one of Yog's friends put it. This is why we feel secure. No one really knows if what we are saying is real.

But those novels I read usually come to the same conclusion. The people in their VR worlds forget that there is a real world out there. And in all the preoccupied time in their 'safe' world, they forgot how to live and interact with real people in a real way; face to face. They no longer remember how to read peoples facial expressions and they don't remember how to tell the difference between a lie and the truth. Most are too frightened to be seen by other people as they really are. They lost something to technology.

Perhaps this is too extreme to comprehend. Or worse, there are those out there who know all too well exactly what I'm talking about. Remember that a journal is something for one to reflect upon themselves. To self analyze in order to learn and grow. If you blog, I hope you haven't forgotten how to just log. You don't always need the weB to express yourself.