What's a blog? (update)

I'm back - finally! (see below for an additional e-mail reply...)

Charleston was interesting indeed. Beautiful homes built by monies from plantation owners on the backs of slaves. Dolphins jumping and diving in the bay, raw oysters and carriage rides. The conference was in a beautiful old hotel.

We worked hard. Long hours of board meetings, presentations given and heard. Linda Babcock had an important message in her keynote speech. It was especially interesting learning about the Gullah Culture.

However, I found it most intriguing that very few people - in fact almost no one - knew what a blog is! The membership of NCCCC is in higher education. When fellow members of the organization asked me what I have been doing lately and I replied, "Blogging," there were only two women who knew what that was. One had been reading a blog of her niece, who was using it to tell the family about her travels. The other was disgusted with the concept of not interacting face to face with others. She termed it as journal writing, a kind of "vomiting" everything out in public. Mostly people shook their heads. "What's a blog?" they asked. When I told them they asked again, "How is it different from a website?"

So - as many as we think we are, and as powerful as bloggers are becoming, methinks we are still a minority. A large minority.

But oh, fellow and sister bloggers, so much more exciting than that.

We are on the cutting edge!

This evening I received this e-mail reply about "what's a blog?"

Was interesting to read this on your blog:

"there were only two women who knew what that was. One had been reading a blog of her niece, who was using it to tell the family about her travels. The other was disgusted with the concept of not interacting face to face with others."

Why limit oneself to face-to-face interactions? 

"She termed it as journal writing, a kind of "vomiting" everything out in public. Mostly people shook their heads. 'What's a blog?' they asked. When I told them they asked again, 'How is it different from a website?'"

Suprising that so few knew about blogs.  Perhaps these people don't spend as much time online as we do?  I've been reading blogs for a few years now. The word "blog" was even added to the Oxford English dictionary (as both a noun and verb) a couple of years ago. 

I get different things from different types of blogs. There are blogs I read for humorous content and links to other interesting stuff on the internet, political blogs that cover a lot of the stuff the so-called liberal media is afraid to touch(and it doesn't hurt to look at stuff from the other side now and then, either), and people's more "personal" blogs that are more like journals (I feel somewhat voyeuristic reading some of those, sometimes, but--I adore your editor's blog.  Keen insight to a lot of pop culture stuff and damn funny and well written too!).

I find that people who don't spend a lot of time online sometimes have difficulty understanding those that do when it comes to news, information, blogs, usenet and other online communities and relationships.

Of course, I love the internet! Where else could you find such a fascinating article about toilets: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/toilet.htmlpg=1&topic=toilet&topic_set= or why the tomato I cut open yesterday was full of sprouts inside: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tompests/msg0909365321508.html
http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article.php?id=57  ?

Comments

[Ronni Bennett]

According to a Pew Research survey done last November:

8 million people have created blogs.

27% of internet users read blogs.

12% of internet users have left comments on blogs.

62% of internet users don't know what a blog is.

[Adriana Bliss]

Yeah, I totally believe the statistics...that's one reason I don't imagine blogs will have that much effect on the literary world.

Good post - glad to have you back! I look forward to your daily observations, your blogging. They're always so interesting and thought-provoking.

As a note, I've associated the term, "vomiting" with journal writing, too. It CAN often be a shedding of one's internal unpleasantries. But so often those unpleasantries are shared by others and so often the unpleasantries are written so well, the vomit becomes...um...pleasant.

[Tamar]

Great! Statistics that support my thoughts about this. Thanks so much.

Yes, Adriana, it is good to be back. Often, during the conference I so wanted to just sit quietly and read all my wonderful intelligent, humorous and talented new blogger "buddies!"

[Danny]

I don't know why that person's comment about "vomiting" infuriates me so considering I used to have the same fear myself about blogging. But that woman's perceptions seem ridiculously broad stroke and dismissive--in another time and place she might have said the same thing about BOOKS.

I find myself feeling especially irritable tonight--time to go vomit in my blog!