Apr282007
Looking back as blogging approaches 10 years old
Filed under Blog News,Blog Trends by BlogKing at 12:36 am on Apr 28 2007
Six Apart (makers of TypePad and Moveable Type) has an interesting ongoing series of posts about weblog history and its pioneers as the medium reaches its tenth year. The lastest interview is with Michael Sippey, who helped influence some of the fundamental thinking about blogging.
I wrote a toss-off piece in 1995 called “The Three C’s of Computing,” which argued that these tools (connected PCs) are good for Creating, Consuming and Connecting. At the time we had OK tools for creation (think MS Office), a growing set of tools for consumption (think AOL), and a very nascent set of connection that wasn’t being covered by the mainstream press (boards, listservs, USENET, etc.). I wrote back then that the dream would be combining the three “into one, glorious future: creating, consuming and connecting all at once.” I think we’re starting to realize that dream with blogs, social networks, photo sharing, presence broadcasting, etc.
- What do you think are the big-picture trends for technologies like blogging? Is blogging a solved problem, like email, or are there more big leaps to be made?
Blogging is definitely not a solved problem. Go back to the three C’s. We’re getting to the point where normal people can start to use the “creation” tools…but we still have a long way to go to make it easier. If today’s RSS reading experience is the end of the line for “consumption” then someone should take our industry out back for a beating. And “connecting” is only starting to get interesting — every application is becoming social, and as a industry we’ll find more interesting ways to traverse and use the network graphs. Then take all of that and tear it away from the desktop. Here in the US we’re still remarkably PC-centric; the mobile and ambient modes have yet to be leveraged effectively. (Look, I used the words “leveraged” and “ambient” in the same sentence. Drink!)
If things were ever “solved” in the computer industry I suspect that the industry has died. The constant pushing in new directions is the very nature of it.
