| Thursday, April 29, 2004 |
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LOGGING IN TOUCH by: Carlos Miguel Perez
(abstracted from Pilipinas 2.0 magazine)
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The blog is among the most important ways of online communication today. The most common form is a journal of thoughts and opinions on personal life, called "personal blogs." Others cite and link to other sites, offering their opinion. Essayists find the blog format convenient for self-publishing their work.
Some blog writers - bloggers- write for themselves. Many of them prefer to remain anonymous, and invent psuedonyms as their online indentity. Some want visitors to leave comments and insights, while others prefer one-way publishing without interaction. Many write for communities, either real life family or friends, or for people met online.
The earliest Philippine blogs date back to around 2000, the time when blogging emerged as the mainstream in US internet culture. While the more sophisticated bloggers use custom blogging setups and their own software that allows them to get up and running in a few minutes. The few steps it takes often leads to a long lasting habit.
People used to keeping handwritten journals move easily to blogs. Many pour out their thoguhts in a stream of consciousness, unmindful of who is reading or what other would think. Even more people read silently, a passive audience of those who share their thoughts to the world. When the readers wish to make contact, they start by leaving comments. They often move on to starting their own blogs, letting them continue the discussion in their own space. Blogging is contagious.
Those more inclined with art designs and tinkering with web toys make their blogs an exercise in home page improvement. Many consider the personal blogs to be the functional heir of the personal web pages that swept the web in the mid 90's craze. With their titles, themes and taglines, blog act as an online extension of ones public persona. People without regular websites post their blog address as their home page. Unlike the mid 90's homepage which was a demonstration of function over form. Building blogs emphasizes clean writing over flashy graphics.
This online personal may take up issues. Many pinoy bloggers write less about themselves and more about the issues that affect them. They are a mirror of society, technology and whatever takes up their thinking time. Blogs allow them to send their message to an audience of interested people. Online forums used to be the main venue for this, but the blogging medium gives more power to the opinion maker.
Blogs are a soapbox where their owners have the right to speak, forums on the other hand try to make their members equal.Some bloggers write about issues, others have issues. Controversies are not unknown in the blogging world. The anonymity of blogging frees one to have less restraint in showing their opinions. Real world events can catalyze the community into taking one stand or another. A recent incident are recorded on a blog while the reactions to this real life event echoed across different people's pages.
Further Reading (still from the article of Mr. Carlos Miguel Paraz:)
for history of blogs, see http://www.rebeccablood.net/essay/weblog_history.html
for strong opinon againts blogs, see
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/bones/WhyIHateWebLogs.html
(there are still some more, but i only copied what i think is very good and very well to the point and i like the article of Mr.Carlos Miguel Paraz, so i decided to put it on my blog )
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| posted by infraternam meam @ 4:19 AM |
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| About Me |
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Name: infraternam meam
Home: Chicago, United States
About Me: I am now at the prime of my life
and have been married for the past 25 years.
Sickly at times, but wants to see the elixir vita,
so that I will be able to see my grandchildren from my two boys.
See my complete profile
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