Entry #1: Blogs don't rule the world yet.

With the fast, exponential growth of human-internet interaction, used as a platform for idea/thought, knowledge, and media sharing, seen since the implementation of the World Wide Web from 1990 to today; it is difficult to not extrapolate that this expansion will indeed continue. That sharing our lives and becoming aware of the lives of others, from the personal to the professional (individuals and organizations) and academic, will become evermore integrated aspects of our lives as technology continues developing.

On a small scale, this progression has been evidenced in blogs. In the early years in the short history of blogs, their main purpose was, as humorously concluded on spellbrand.com, to share, "feelings about politics and [...] recipe(s) for awesome peanut butter cookies." A simple way to say that the audiences were few, as access to computers and internet were not as vast as today, and the bloggers were mainly individuals interested in sharing what could be classified a common-place topics that were primarily from a personal aspect. As the price of computers and internet access decreased and became affordable to the mainstream population, blogging saw an inverted increase; not only in amount, but in type.

Today, there are various kinds of blogs. There are personal blogs, where individuals share aspects of their lives primarily for people they know and who care about their lives. Casual/professional blogs can be written by a single person or multiple, and intertwine aspects of someone's life and some specific interests, such as cooking, travel, parenthood, relationships, etc. A professional blog is one that usually (not always) supports the writer financially, where the writer spends a significant amount of time blogging (may be their primary "job"), and has a larger than average fan base. There are also blogs run by organizations such as companies/businesses, government divisions, educational/academic institutions, etc.

Personally, most blogs to me, especially the personal, casual/professional, sometimes the professional blogs seem globally repetitive and somewhat monotonous. Kind of like seeing a few pictures of wallpaper and it seeming as though you've seen them all. [The picture below represents my usual response to most content on personal and casual/professional blogs].

Even though most blogs don't manage to capture my enthusiasm or curiosity, there are a few types that do. Some examples are blogs that are humorous, sarcastic, research/academic, intellectual/philosophical based blogs (not all necessarily in the same content).

Here's two examples of blogs that do captivate my attention.

I Can Haz Cheezburger: This is "blog" that I actually do visit every once in a while. A "blog" because it is a mixture of website/media upload/sharing site. Users can share media from other sites or upload their own and use the site's tool text creator to add funny and/or misspelled text to the pictures. When the site began, and the reason it became famous was because of the creation of humorous pictures with cats and mainly misspelled text/captions. As the site gained a viral fan base, it expanded to using pictures of other animals, and drawings, videos, pictures of a variety of other topics. Overall it's an entertaining site good for some laughs.

I Can Has Cheezburger "classics" featuring a cat and funny and/or misspelled text.

The site also presents real stories such as one about a cat named Bubba who is a "student" at a California High School.

Original caption says: He Is a Very Serious Student

High School ID card for their Cat Student

And a story about a rescued kitten who had been badly burned. And a trip the kitten and the new human took from California to New Jersey  on a motorbike after the kitten healed.

Next is two similar blogs of the same type. They are both academically/research inclined neuroscience blogs that share news on recent neuroscience related discoveries or cultural changes related to the topic. Such as the first one, Law and Neuroscience, backed by Vanderbilt University, which also shares information on how discoveries in neuroscience could, do and have affect law. This newly found blog is interesting to me because it delves  into a connection I hadn't given thought to previously.

Neurophilosophy is a blog backed by The Guardian, an online news media outlet. This blog has articles on a variety of topics relating to neuroscience relating to connections with philosophy, technology, and neural circuitry discoveries in other animals as well. It is also a newly found blog, and one I like for its diversity in thought provoking ideas
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In contrast, a blog, better yet, a blog type that generally does not pique my interest is the lifestyle blogs. Seeing "snapshots" of the life of one specific individual and/or their families and other related topics generally are not appealing in my view.

It seems to me that in the future, with expected technological advancements, sharing ideas, thoughts, media, knowledge will (kind of obviously) still continue (if the human species persists), but perhaps not with blogs leading the way. From personal experience, being an avid blog reader is something that has failed to catch my interest and turn into a habit; even though I do enjoy some types of blogs. Maybe the platform of blogs has reached its peak and will, or is already giving way to other platforms such as tumblr, imgur, twitter, reddit, facebook, etc. For now all I can say is that blogs don't rule the world yet....and perhaps never will.




Sources credit:

 Bonigala, Mash. "Top 10 Professional Blogger Logos." SpellBrand. SpellBrand. Web. 1 Nov. 2015

"History of the Web." World Wide Web Foundation. World Wide Web Foundation. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.