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June 14, 2005
We blogs wobble
Imagine that the world were expanding. The globe, that is, the physical earth that we all walk on, growing outward, layer by layer. Ignore, for a moment, the fact that distances between things on the surface would be forever increasing. Imagine, if you have to, that buildings can stretch, that roads can grow, that everything increases with the soil, so nothing ever breaks. Now imagine that each layer, as it grows, contains a record of every conversation ever had. Every word ever spoken, every song every sung, even every grunt ever uttered by our most distant of anscestors. Imagine and each every sound made by man is available to us, retrievable by anyone who can dig a careful hole. Imagine how easy the study of history would become. Want to hear the Gettysburg address from the mouth of the man who wrote it? Want to know if Nero was any good at the fiddle? Just dig deep enough and give a listen.
Etymology would be easy, too. As easy as it was for me, for example, to find the origins of the word "blog". A quick search on Wikipedia not only tells me what a blog is (useful information, surely), but also the name of the person who coined the very word itself. Or, really, the phrase the led to the word. We blog. Weblog sliced too close to the beginning.
And we do blog, now. There's no denying the word is a word, though only time will tell if it is just some passing fad (they won't be burying it next to "def" in the great graveyard for lost and abandoned words, of course, but that's only because the graveyard is in alphabetical order). But I don't like the word. The word, it bothers me.
Because, really. Log? Is that was this is? A log? Logs, if they're not burning in fire pits or rotting in swamps, are records kept by rote. Ships keep logs, details of speed or cargo. Doormen keep logs of who enters and exits. And yes, computers keep logs, of errors or access. Logs are everywhere and, if you're a statistician, they are certainly wonderful tools. But is that what I am doing? Am I keeping a log? A record of thoughts, surely, but what room is there for deviation in a log? If my thoughts, or the particular thoughts I care to share, vary from day to day, doesn't that make me a bad logger? What would my captain say if today I write about "blog" and tomorrow about African debt relief? Would he replace me at the next port with someone more reliable.
And another thing. Context matters. If I take these words off of this website and put them in a book, do they become a book log? A booklog? Boo klog?
A klog?
I hear people have been klogging for thousands of years. Truely, history is nothing more than a wheel ever turning.
An etmologist might be able to tell me how often words form, not because they make logical sense, but because they roll off the toungue so nicely. I would imagine that it happens quite often. And someday, when Google opens their massive archives to the anthropologists, historians, and, yes, etymologists yet to come, they will have access to a history of words that would only be exceeded by that ever growing earth envisioned above. Perhaps they will have a greater insite into the word "blog" then I could possibly have, living, as I do, within the very generation that coined it. But I maintain, simply because I can, that the word is off somehow, and so, when it comes to describing my own site, I will not use it. I don't have an alternative. Perhaps I will someday, but for now, rather than being a blog, this site will contain only words, stored in binary on magnetic media, transmitted via wire and air, displayed in color on a screen somewhere in the world, and viewed by human eyes.
And if I am sure of anything, it is that the future, at least, is round and bright, and ever, ever expanding.
Posted by matt at June 14, 2005 02:48 PM