Five Years
March 3rd marked the fifth anniversary of this blog. Nick Smith helped me get started, and Nick also had the idea of a "Covenant College blogroll" which eventually evolved into the "live blog portal" of Chattablogs and the rest of the "Terrablogs" domains (with the help of Ben Huffine, Garret, Dwayne, John, Paul, and a number of other individuals over the years).
Even though our energies never really congealed to some kind of growth-oriented focus, I still believe the central premise of the project sound: people in the digital realm united by location, not ideology or interest. Even now I think the "local network" is an important part of Facebook's advantage over other social-networking platforms like MySpace.
The narcissism of blogging has a built-in temperance mechanism that goes into effect over time: once you've put something online, a record of what you've said always exists somewhere (most often in Google's cache). Unless you're a sociopath, it only takes a handful of burned bridges (or empty death threats) to instill a healthy respect for the power of words uttered in a universally accessible medium.
This generation will be the first who, upon death, will have an overwhelming amount of content - words, images, & video - available for anyone to effortlessly consume. Future generations will be able to quickly & effortlessly construct portraits of their ancestors. Big Macs, MacMansions, and now MacHistory. Will it be accurate? Does knowing a subject's opinion on Over The Rhine help them have a better sense of who he/she is?
Five years down. Thanks to everyone who's participated.
Blogging | By Josiah Roe | 03:56 AM
Comments
It's been fun to use this pocket of the Web to embarrass myself for all of eternity.
Thanks to all who created Chattablogs, and to those who use it.
I wonder, though: IS there some kind of common focus we could attempt?
Posted by: Bill at April 2, 2008 11:06 AM
My vote is for cross-stitching patterns
Posted by: davidm. at April 2, 2008 12:14 PM
You mean St. Elmo-centric, neo-Calvinist spoiled-kid pseudo-philosophy isn't it?
Just kidding. Congrats, and thanks for all.
Posted by: joe lance at April 2, 2008 12:24 PM
Heh, don't forget white-guilt, irony, & self-loathing.
Posted by: Josiah at April 2, 2008 12:45 PM
main street, sustainability, green economy and coptix?
Posted by: davidm. at April 2, 2008 02:12 PM
Why Covenant College is a whore of Babylon for wanting uptight conservative parents to feel good about where they're paying $15K a year to send their kids to college?
Posted by: Gordon at April 2, 2008 02:49 PM
Winner!
Posted by: davidm. at April 2, 2008 02:51 PM
15K/year? Since when? It wasn't that low when I was there.
Posted by: Carrie at April 2, 2008 03:16 PM
Ya, isn't it like $15K a semester now?
Posted by: Josiah at April 2, 2008 03:54 PM
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