So What Did You Do Today?

Whatever happened to those good old days, the ones where you had to have an actual conversation with a person before you could say you honestly knew them? It was not until I looked back on the internet usage of my fellow classmates that I realized everything you truly needed to know about them was right in the sites they visited. I quite honestly assumed that, although we would never have all the same sites listed in each individual blog, one site would be visited almost religiously by at least a great majority of our class. That site is Facebook. Every blog I skimmed in order to prep for this post referenced the networking site of networking sites at least once, if not several times.
Because we have a fairly diverse list of hometowns in our class it was to be expected that there would be sites visited that some of us maybe had not heard of before. These differences were seen mostly through local news sites and even some local blogs. It seems that we used the internet for more of a reading, information gathering, and networking opportunity than anything else. Unless you got online to update a blog, or send an email there was not much writing occurring.
Though it always feels, at least to me, just a little awkward to peer into the personal lives of others, I believe the "research" aspect of this post taught me a few things. I think the most important thing I was able to gather was an insight into the personality and background of several of my fellow students. Seeing the sites most visited by them allowed me to realize that though you may not talk to someone because they sit across the room from you, you may have more in common with them then you ever thought possible. I also realized that today's generation has a need to be constantly included in the loop, and everyone has their own form of gossip mill.

Where in the World Wide Web

Surprisingly enough, I did not use the internet as much as i would have expected this weekend. Due to the holiday and a rather hectic work schedule there was not much time for it.

Saturday:
8:00-8:20am checked and updated Facebook.
6:00-7:00pm had Facebook up while working on homework and cleaning my room
6:00-7:00pm listened to music on Pandora radio
10:00-11:00pm on Facebook catching up with out of town friends

Sunday:
8:00-10:30 listening to Pandora while getting ready for church
1:30-2:40 read articles online for Modes of Inquiry paper
1:00-1:30 Facebook to work out plans for the rest of the weekend

Mr. Sullivan, Why Do You Blog?

Patience is a virtue rarely seen in today's fast paced society. Without bloggers such as Andrew Sullivan, most of the population would be at a loss. Consider a world before the constant current event update. If Andrew Sullivan had never discovered the then underground spread of news, chaos would continue to plague the unorganized news highlights of typical webpages. Sullivan accidentally stumbled upon the new reverse rolodex of the digital community.

For Sullivan, the idea of spreading current news throughout the world in a matter of moments after its occurence did not come until after he concurred his fear of technology and began with past works of art and research. Once he discovered this free-form public diary, there was no turning back. He found blogging as a way to relieve the stresses of journalistic office work. It gave him, and other previously voiceless individuals, the ability to show creativity and personal opinion not available in structured informative news writing.

The most interesting quote to catch my eye was Sullivan's true boiled down opinion of the blogging world, "There is a vividness to this immediacy that cannnot be rivaled by print".  This can be considered the most quintessential purpose of blogging. Generally, by the time a story is printed in the paper the entire country has heard it, and misconstrued it, to an almost fabricated rumor. With real time blog updates the news has less opportunity to morph into the thoughts and ideas of others. It has a way of trademarking itself due to its semi-permanent appearance. Some may accuse blogging of consuming the need for a traditional pen and paper method, but bloggers, such as Sullivan, realize the boundaries where "matter dictates medium".

Blogs in the World

Creating the blog itself was not a difficult task. However, when it came to naming my personal blog I had a bit of "writer's block". I was most surprised about how creative you could be with your blog. I had to remind myself that the main purpose was the written part of the blog, not about how I could completely change the appearance of the blog page.
Blogging for this class has not changed my opinion of blogs. I was fortunate to have a similar assignment in my senior english class. We used a site called edublogs.org. We would respond to class discussions, articles we read, and general topics we felt the need to give our opinions on.
For me making a blog and having a Facebook or MySpace page have both similarities and differences. I see a site such as Facebook or MySpace to have more of a social aspect where people can interact with friends and family. People using one of these social sites are more apt to limiting the amount of information displayed because the pages are not anonymous. Blogging is more of a means of spreading information. Blogs tend to contain current event type information that pertains more to communities as a whole instead of just a certain small group of individuals. Blogs are synonymous to writing in that they are a means of putting ideas into societybut through a webpage instead of paper.