A beginning
Hello and welcome to /dev/klog. I’m Jean-Francois Roy, your host for tonight. Cliches aside, this page is about the reasons I created this weblog (henceforth compressed to the modern idiom “blog”) and the finer details of what I will generally discuss on it.
On blogs and humankind
A blog is a personal endeavor by the conventional definition of the term, if there is such a thing. Therefore, the fundamental concept behind a blog should be intimately linked to the personality and interests of its author. It is noteworthy that a number of “company” blogs exist, but I believe that those merely represent the personality and interests of those corporations, which legally speaking are distinct moral entities, although arguably some may not deserve to be called as such. In any case, from that definition it should be clear to the reader that blogs are not a new form of journalism, a distinction which sadly is sometimes forgotten. Rather, the closest traditional concept to this contemporary phenomenon are personal journals. Indeed, in ages past, when humankind did not master boolean algebra and electrons, people used to keep written records of their lives. Those memories, feelings, thoughts and dreams forever set on paper with ink allowed countless generations to pass on bits and pieces of their individual components’ existences to us. This is in and of itself reason enough to write about one’s life. How will our heirs properly appreciate or reject our legacy if we leave no traces of what led us to do what we did? It is fundamental for every one of us to so.
Like most other things related to humans, the reasons have not changed but the means have. Just like computers have replaced typewriters, which themselves replaced pens, blogs are an evolution of the personal journal. The content is the same since arguably human concerns have remained the same, but the form has dramatically changed. It is self-evident that the computer and telecommunication revolution has a lot to do with this observation. Indeed, everything is now more connected than ever, including people. Which implicitly means that the lives of others are of ever increasing interest to particular individuals, regardless of the geological boundaries. Therein lies the raison d’être of blogs: to massively expand the capacity of individuals to share their daily experiences and thoughts.
One may now wonder on the role of traditional media in this new self-publishing reality. I will not spend too many words on the subject because the answer is intuitive. Indeed, as you would expect, the role of “traditional media” has not changed at all. That is, it is still about informing the public of matters that concern all of a well-defined group of individuals, be it a family, community, city, state or nation. This process should be done in an objective manner that brings no prejudice to any one standalone agent and that fosters debates leading to the resolution of common problems. Therefore, blogs are not the “new media poised to replaced the old” like some of the more zealous bloggers might lead you to believe, but rather simply a “new media” that will grow and evolve alongside of “traditional media”.
Considering the above, it should now be obvious why anyone would want to publish a blog and what blogs should be about. But for the critics that often suggest there are little if no good blogs out here (here being the Internet) and ergo that it is not worth it to publish one, let me make it clear: your expectations were misplaced. Blogs are not and should not be authoritative sources of information or news, and as such will never appeal to as wide an audience as that of traditional media. It is very likely, from a purely statistical point of view, that most blogs will not appeal to any one particular individual. However, this is in no way a valid argument against publication, merely a reasonable assessment of reality. Trying to adapt a blog to make it more widely popular is to distort the true nature of blogging and is something we want to avoid doing.
It is in that spirit that this blog shall be conducted, with the hopes of documenting yet a little bit more my era and perhaps of helping someone somewhere solve a ridiculously easy problem (I am no genius, after all).
What’s next?
With the framework of /dev/klog determined, let me now talk about myself and therefore establish exactly what this whole blog will be about. By doing so, I will either convince you to subscribe or to never come back again. Without further ado, let’s hit page 2.
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