Of course without Brad Graham complaining in jest about that annoying word on his blog Bradlands back in 1999, we wouldn't have the word 'blogosphere.'
Where are we headed? Will personal publishing soon be described as being "as simple as falling off a blog"? Shall we see ultra-conservative gays start weblogs and dub themselves Blog Cabin Republicans? Track the tides with an Ebb Blog? Is blog- (or -blog) poised to become the prefix/suffix of the next century? Will we soon suffer from (and tire of) blogorreah? Despite its whimsical provenance, it's an awkward, homely little word.
Goodbye, cyberspace! Hello, blogiverse! Blogosphere? Blogmos? (Carl Sagan: "Imagine billions and billions and billions of blogs.")
Graham was found dead yesterday in his St. Louis home of "natural causes." Goodbye Brad -- we'll always have blogosphere.
Sorry to hear Graham has died!
ReplyDeleteI actually use the word blogland when I refer to this blogiverse of blogs! Isn't it awesome!? What would we be doing right now if we didn't have a blog and all our bloggy friends to chat with??
Yet his word shall never die. Can someone be said to be truly dead when they are remembered?
ReplyDeleteAw that's too bad! But he created a word. That's more than some people do in their lifetime.
ReplyDeleteAs Sue said, what WOULD we be doing if it weren't for Brad and blogging? Probably talking on one of those big ass cell phones from the 80's...They show it on one of those free credit report commercials. My kids roll their eyes when I tell them THAT'S the kind of phone I HAD, and I needed BIG muscles, too! It was heavy!
ReplyDeleteWhat would we be doing? I'd be cleaning the garage, trimming trees, having a life. But of course, the world would be deprived of my insights and that would be terrible. :-)
ReplyDeleteMy first cell phone had a Pontiac attached to it! There was a time when being alone meant being alone and I miss it. Driving a car meant solitude and independence. Hanging with your friends meant just that, not standing with people you know while communicating with other people on cell phones about the latest cell phones.
Despite being the furthest removed from technology of any generation in history they're the most emotionally dependent on it.
The scary part is that I used to have a wooden phone with a crank on it in my room when I was in high school (still have it in my garage)My parents didn't want to get another phone so I bought it for $4 and wired it in myself. As a little boy, we built telephones and telegraphs from scratch, moved up to building radios and transmitters and of course we knew how they worked, how transistors and tubes worked and how to design circuits using them.
Try to find a kid who knows how today -- but they're all "tech savvy" and wide open to every pseudoscientific scam that comes down the road.
I like the word, "blogosphere" because it seems to portray blogging as something that exists all around us but no one seems to be able to isolate the source...
ReplyDeleteBack in the days of a software written in Cobol and a network run with Novell I felt that I had control of our data because that was technology I understood...
With the dominance of Microsoft in the mid 90's I have lost control and am now dependent on a bunch of folks that I believe have absolutely no clue what is going on but they know the proceedures...
Never ask 'why' because all you will get is, 'I dunno know...thats the way it is...."
"Imagine ... billions and billions and billions of blogs ..."
ReplyDelete... all with little beady eyes just like HIS ... only smaller.
I also have an aversion to cutesy made up words and, initially, the word "blog" really grated. But I've grown used to it now and it has become a generally accepted term.
ReplyDeleteAnd it does make for convenient descriptive content when wanting to convey the concept of hanging out on the internet in the "bloggerhood" or "blogosphere".
Fogg said, "As a little boy, we built telephones and telegraphs from scratch, moved up to building radios and transmitters and of course we knew how they worked, how transistors and tubes worked and how to design circuits using them."
ReplyDeleteMy son who is in his thirties was a middle schooler as the home pc became reality. Before there was the internet there were kids like him and his friends.
I came home fromwork one day to find him on the floor of our dining room with conputer components spread all around him and the phone line running into a tangle of wires. He was typing away on the key board. My initial reaction was, "What are you doing!"
Typical of THIS son, he replied, "I'm talking to Bill."
He and his friend built modems and figured out how to "IM" each other.
Different generations, different modalities but the resourcefulness and inventiveness it the same. No?
I like "blog." The term "web log" was always sort of overkill -- blog has come to sound like a word in its own right, as if it didn't come from (we)'blog. I've become quite naturalized to "blogosphere" as well.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there are always those strange experiences with words that mysteriously un-naturalize -- ever suddenly get the sensation that one of those choppy little Anglo-Saxon words like "thump" or "mug" just CAN'T actually mean anything? No way -- people keep saying it just to drive you crazy. There is no such word.... Somehow, this only happens for me with Anglo-Saxon words; latinates don't seem to rebel that way.
Mug is Scandinavian - probably came to England with the Norsemen. Same goes with Thump. The same as ON Dumpa. There used to be a germanic letter - a D with a horizontal line through it that sounded a bit like a D and a bit like a theta. Same thing did happen with Old German words like Vader which evolved into Vater in German and Father in English.
ReplyDeleteAll real words, sorry -- and Odin will getcha if you're not careful.
As for Saxon -- well it's just German -- the most real language there is, nicht wahr?
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteOh yes, they're real -- it's that the tiny dino brain (walnut-sized, as you know) occasionally plays a trick on me, making the word's longstanding usage and denotation seem like a fraud. Maybe the psychologicalists have coined some term or other for the phenomenon -- "word slippage" is as good as I can do.
As for Odin, he and Great Sky Father T-Rex are just going to have to duke it out in Valhalla. And may the better deity win.
Easily I agree but I think the post should have more info then it has.
ReplyDeleteNot in my job description, Anony.
ReplyDelete