Thoughts Decoded

Recently, I came across an interesting book which had information about the latest craze that most of us have been into, called “Blogs”, on how it is changing the world and the way we look at things. I blog randomly whenever I find time from my work. Most of the information in the Book got my eyebrows furrowed by surprise. Here are some, for you to get surprised:

Definition of a “Blog”: A website that contains an online personal journal with reflection, comments and often hyperlinks.

First appeared in 1997

Over the years, philosopher, anthropologist and scientist have tried to define what makes “Homo Sapiens” unique. Experts say, we feel and express emotion, we experience wonder and curiosity and we have the ability to contemplate why we exist and what the meaning of our lives may be….

There is another distinguishing characteristic of human beings that has been unknown or underestimated until recently:

“We Blog”

The period of decoration of caves went on for several generations. The paintings were often first inspired by the physical forms in the caves and were a kind of commentary on those forms. Then later painter and story tellers made subsequent commentaries about what they saw on the walls and what they had experienced in their lives. Having no written alphabetical language, they used the mysterious visual language of the figurative and abstract to describe their ideas and beliefs about the hunt, the spirit of the bison, deer and various other animals, sickness, mortality, the afterlife, the earth.

The general observation is that much of this art emerged as a part and parcel of a long and highly compelling conversation:

“One member of the tribe initiating another, one generation speaking to the next, one group of humans inspired by and reacting to the ideas of those who came before. The conversation continues and is stored and archived for future access. The group memorializes and institutionalizes knowledge- and learns as a result.”

Once you start to look for blog like phenomena in the history, you start to find them every where. Leonardo da Vinci probably wrote the greatest unpublished blog of all time in his more than 30000 pages of diary entries.

The reason blogs will embed themselves into our new cultural DNA is that we are living in a unique moment in time when the ancient human urges to converse, communicate, argue publicly, learn collaboratively, share experiences, and archive collective knowledge.

And increasingly, the ordinary mortal doesn’t need to know anything about technology to become a blogger or to read blogs or to participate in this new media revolution.

Blogging represents one important wave of innovation that is contributing to restoring the lost voice of the ordinary citizen in our culture.

Reference:

Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture by David Kline, Dan Burstein