I’ve hesitated calling my web site and what “I do” a blog. I mean, I’ve been doing this thing years before the term came into being, and like others, I too am long on words and short on links to be considered a true weblog (read my article, Why I Write). But I just read Robert Cringley’s perspective on the subject of blogs, and wanted to elaborate on it.

First, let’s begin with a quote from Cringley’s article:

Radio was invented with the original idea that it would replace telephones and give us wireless communication. That implies two-way communication, yet how many of us own radio transmitters? In fact, the popularization of radio came as a broadcast medium, with powerful transmitters sending the same message—entertainment—to thousands or millions of inexpensive radio receivers. Television was the same way, envisioned at first as a two-way visual communication medium. Early phonographs could record as well as play and were supposed to make recordings that would be sent through the mail, replacing written letters. The magnetic tape cassette was invented by Philips for dictation machines, but we mainly used it to hear music before there were CDs.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, envisioned that your “browser” was also an “editor” (see his article, [The WorldWideWeb browser]). The idea is that the web was originally supposed to be a form of two-way communication. Not the click-per-view form of one-way entertainment it is commonly viewed.

This is why I feel strongly about getting people hooked up with a “blog” as I think it is the easiest way for us mere mortals to use the web for two-way communications. To publish as easy as it is to write.