Geoff Duncan

Blogs. Also called web-logs or weblogs. Blogging.

What's that they say: those who forget history are doomed to repeat it?

A reporter at a local television station called last week. He's one of a handful of local "mainstream" journalists who occasionally ask about computing and technology topics—I suspect only when preferred sources aren't available. (Coincidence this call came the day Macworld Expo opened in San Francisco? I think not.) Which is fine: I'm happy to offer background, provide references, and opine quotably. But I don't do on-camera interviews. For one thing, I don't dress well and I'm not photogenic. For another, television interviews take about two hours for 15 to 20 seconds of heavily edited on-screen time in which your statements are often trimmed, clipped, and re-ordered so you say whatever the reporter and/or producer wants you to say. Which may not be what you actually said.

Tangent: Another reason not to do TV interviews? You have to clean off your desk because the producer inevitably wants a shot of your hands typing. An interview about online security and identity theft? Shot of hands typing. Spam? Shot of hands typing. Shielding children from adult material? Shot of hands typing. Windows viruses? Shot of hands typing. Future of Apple Computer? Shot of hands typing. Terrorists using the Internet to coordinate activities? Shot of hands typing. The sole exception blinky lights: if you have blinky lights, they may also shoot footage of blinky lights. One TV crew shot footage a rack of audio gear, thinking it was super-super Internet stuff. Fortunately, those clips didn't get used on-air. But I should count my blessings: back in the nasty old days, they also wanted audio of your modem squawking.

This reporter was doing a story on blogs, their apparent popularity and buzzword-ishness, and all the "new blogging technology" out there. I referred him to a colleague who is much more into this stuff. "I couldn't reach him this morning, so I called you." Ah yes, the truth at last. So I briefly explained blogs started out as "web logs," and were primarily online journals written by individuals, usually about their hobbies, interests, or daily lives. Before there were blogs, there were home pages before that there were things like finger plans. (If you know about finger plans, you're either old-school-yo! or spending too much time with your command line.) And now some people enjoy reading and creating blogs, some fewer people are obsessive about blogs, and still some fewer people actually make money operating Web sites which might be called blogs.

Software for creating Web pages appeared before the Internet took off, and commercial HTML editors which emulated word processors and page layout programs appeared by 1995. Similarly, software to organize, categorize, sort, track, and manage digital content (like text, images, and media files—these cools are called CMS or Content Management Systems) has existed for about as long as computer became capable of storing more content than could easily be managed in a single file listing. People used these tools to create what, today, would be called blogs. And no one made a big fuss about it. Sometimes these things were all rolled together: I made my first Web site-generating program in 1994 using Apple's HyperCard, combining site authoring and content management in a single application. Still runs today.

A few years ago, software like Moveable Type, WordPress, and their kin put a Web-based front-end on the idea so users could do everything (very awkwardly) from a Web browser, and didn't necessarily have to know anything about HTML to set up a normal-looking blog-like thingy. Not coincidentally, selling and hosting some of these tools became a revenue stream unto itself. There's not much new about these things, except they have a buzzword attached to them, they're in active development, and they're in a bit of a symbiotic feedback loop with their user community. Same thing's happened in the past with a number of software applications, from email to games to BitTorrent.

But no. Our Intrepid Reporter wants to talk about all the "new technology" which has made blogging possible. So I explain, again, this stuff didn't enable or create blogging, that the things which would be called blogs substantially pre-date the so-called blogging phenomena, and that so-called blogging software is basically just a new twist on Web page authoring tools with a bit of a CMS. The story—if there is a story—is in the people participating in this activity, not the technology behind it. The implications of world-accessible, small-scale digital publishing. How it might empower people, how it might impact perceptions of journalism and authenticity...

"Well, if that's true," interrupts Our Intrepid Reporter, "how come your blog looks so twentieth century?"

"My blog? I don't have a blog."

"Sure you do. It's on your page, called Perforating or something."

Oh.

"I mean, it's just one big giant page. You can't search it or link to it or anything."

"Um," I say, mental wheels turning. "Tell ya what. Check it tomorrow and tell me what you think."

And this, Dear Reader, is the result.

No, I'm not using blogging software: the technology involved here is entirely twentieth century. Outdated software running on a very old computer on a long-obsolete operating system. I admit I'm not exactly an amateur at this sort of thing, having designed, managed, and implemented a variety of data-driven Web sites and online applications, so I didn't stumble around or shoot myself in the foot very often. But, come on: there's no new technology here, and in the course of a couple hours I was able to throw together something which meets almost all expectations of what a modern "blog" should be.

So now you can search most of the entries I've filed under Percolating for the last few years. Recent entries are called out; when you pull up an entry, you'll see links to previous and next entries, general categories that entry belongs to, and any past or future entries related to the one you're reading. And it's searchable.

And you know what? I still don't have a blog. Just a spot on my Web site where I rant sometimes. Ain't nothin' new about that.

"Why do people keep insisting that I join the 21st Century? I live in the 21st Century! I just don't want to be bothered by the shitheads on the internet!"

—Harlan Ellison