It started out as a simple idea... I wanted to jazz up my website with pictures I'd taken during our recent trip to Barcelona.I'd seen a lot of sites with these rolling photographic slideshows and I wanted to setup something similar for my blog.
I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. A week and 5 unsuccessful attempts at web template changes later, I was a cross eyed, irritable wreck with so much tech jargon buzzing through my head, that when P asked me if I'd like to go out for a stroll Saturday afternoon, I snarled,
"I'm trying to beta test embedded functionalities and synthesize innovative mashups to orchestrate compelling experiences for WEG!"
P....a long pause later.... "Is that a no?"
Blogs selling templates. Blogs selling code to modify templates. Blogs selling advice on why the code on modifying templates was wrong, and selling "corrected" updates on these templates. Blogs discussing the "artistry" of certain codes versus others. It was like I'd opened the closet door and wandered into the secret land of "Geekmania".
Is the entire blogosphere a bubble? Could it be that there are, like, 100 real websites, being written by writers, and the rest, websites related to how to design, modify or enhance these sites and related technology upgrades? Are there any real "readers" out there?
The numbers seem to back this theory - 5 of the Top 10 blogs on Technorati's directory (with a total of 54706 blogs) relate to technology and gadgets, Technology is their third largest category, with 2 sub categories- Infotech and Gadgets- comprising a whopping 6300 blogs!
One thing is clear- The internet is the new piazza. It's the place you come to to pick up something you need, to shop, to grab a quick bite, to meet a friend or a date, or to catch the general buzz.
It's also rapidly seems to be becoming the place you go to get away from more "serious" pursuits - learning, reading, researching, debating. Bloggers, lured by visions of multi million dollar online businesses, are not just cutting down the length of their blog posts, but also the content. The search result is becoming synonymous with data itself, we seem to have
got lost in a maze of empty hyperlinks, most of which link to each other,
very few linking to any actual, reliable information. Ironically, we are so completely taken in by the "mirage" of non information, that we refuse to pay enough for the guys who actually generate reliable content - the entire news journalism industry is currently in a crisis of existence.
30 years ago, a British software consultant, Tim Berners Lee, working at CERN, Geneva, invented a computer program to share his notes with the rest of the scientific community. He called this program Enquire, and designed it to enable users within a computer network to access data residing on each others computers freely. The network grew exponentially to what we know as the Internet today. Making this technology open source is perhaps the greatest contribution by a single human being to society in the modern age. I leave you with this excellent quote by him,
"Whether it is a turning point in societal evolution depends not only on the technology.. but also how we use it!..."
