Note to Self: Happy Anniversary
February 17th, 2009 by Paul CeruzziThis week marks the first anniversary of the IT History blog. When I agreed to write for it, I was not sure it would work–I hardy knew what a blog was (although I did know its history!). Since then, it has been fun, and I plan to keep going.
I still have some reservations, though. Usually when I mention this to my long-time colleagues at the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, they typically say, “Great! Although I’ve never read it.” Or words to that effect. Who has the time to read blogs? Well, obviously some people do, as the statistics on readership have been encouraging.
There have also been the periodic “Blog is Dead” headlines in the press. Those arguments typically say that the blog has been superseded by Facebook, Twitter, and other more immediate venues for a person to vent their ideas. But I am not in this to vent, and neither I nor Sandra feel a need to blog every day telling our readers what we are thinking (or what we had for breakfast, or even more personal details that one finds on Twitter).
Let me go back to that first blog post, which included a photo of Ray Tomlinson and Tim Berners-Lee. Tim used to say that when he helped create the World Wide Web, he hoped that it would become as easy to write to as to read from. The blog fills that need, in ways that Facebook & Twitter do not. It does not mean that you have to write a blog, but you can if you want to.
A more serious critique of the blog is that they’ve turned into bloated, bureaucratic monstrosities, with editorial boards and an obsession with ad revenue and “hits.” Huffington Post and Politico come to mind. That won’t happen here.
Still, I would welcome a little more feedback. Comments and advice are always welcome. Would you like to see coverage of topics that we don’t cover now? More links? Longer essays? I don’t think I can blog more frequently, but if you really want me to I can try.
But I’ll draw the line on what I had for breakfast.