Wednesday, July 05, 2006
I don't play chess very often, but if you're familiar with the game, you know that the white pieces move first. Why? A kid I knew in high school, who was an accomplished chess player and also a Korean-American, explained it to me this way, simply yet profoundly, in semi-broken English. "Long time ago, old man say, and the white shall go first."
There's not a shred of reason or logic behind the old man's decision. Something is simply because it is. It doesn't have to be, but it is.
The word blog has always bothered me. It follows the tradition that Internet pioneers began in the hazy yesteryear of 1997, namely, giving crazy names to companies and products for the precise fact of distinguishing them from the compulsory clones and shameless copies that inevitably follow. Think about it. What are the most successful Internet corporations in the short history of the medium? How about Yahoo, Amazon, Google, Napster...all household names...but what do they mean? Nothing. If I were going to start an online company selling books, music, and just about everything else, I'd name my corporation anything but Amazon, yet the company was revolutionary and remains a cornerstone in E-commerce. The whole thing proves that Shakespeare was right; a rose, by any other name, smells the same. But blog? It sounds like something that belongs in a toilet. I can picture it now...a boy walks out of the bathroom, and his mom goes in soon after..."Get back in here and flush this blog down the toilet!"
Despite my denigration of the term, blogging seems to be the way the world is moving, which defies the attitude of inherant laziness I tend to associate with humans. So why do people blog? Because that's the way it is, and that's they way it's going to be. And no old man had to say it this time.
There's not a shred of reason or logic behind the old man's decision. Something is simply because it is. It doesn't have to be, but it is.
The word blog has always bothered me. It follows the tradition that Internet pioneers began in the hazy yesteryear of 1997, namely, giving crazy names to companies and products for the precise fact of distinguishing them from the compulsory clones and shameless copies that inevitably follow. Think about it. What are the most successful Internet corporations in the short history of the medium? How about Yahoo, Amazon, Google, Napster...all household names...but what do they mean? Nothing. If I were going to start an online company selling books, music, and just about everything else, I'd name my corporation anything but Amazon, yet the company was revolutionary and remains a cornerstone in E-commerce. The whole thing proves that Shakespeare was right; a rose, by any other name, smells the same. But blog? It sounds like something that belongs in a toilet. I can picture it now...a boy walks out of the bathroom, and his mom goes in soon after..."Get back in here and flush this blog down the toilet!"
Despite my denigration of the term, blogging seems to be the way the world is moving, which defies the attitude of inherant laziness I tend to associate with humans. So why do people blog? Because that's the way it is, and that's they way it's going to be. And no old man had to say it this time.
# posted by RBW @ 8:05 AM 
