science

History of blogging

History of blogging is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand History of blogging rather than just read about it. In short: Although the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging can be traced to earlier forms of online communication. Before "blogging" became widespread, users shared content and participated in online communities through platforms such as Usenet, commercial online services including GEnie, Byte Information Exchange (BIX), and CompuServe, as well as e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (B…

Key takeaways

History of blogging belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect History of blogging to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of History of blogging from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Although the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging can be traced to earlier forms of online communication. Before "blogging" became widespread, users shared content and participated in online communities through platforms such as Usenet, commercial online services including GEnie, Byte Information Exchange (BIX), and CompuServe, as well as e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).

1983–1993 Usenet was the primary serial medium included in the original definition of the Internet. It features the moderated newsgroup which allowed all posting in a newsgroup to be under the control of an individual or small group. Most such newsgroups were simply moderated discussion forums, however, in late 1983, mod.ber was created, named after and managed by Brian E. Redman; he, and a few associates regularly posted summaries of interesting postings and threads taking place elsewhere on the net. Another moderated newsgroup, rec.humor.funny started on August 7, 1987. In the 1990s, Internet forum software, such as WebEx, created running conversations with "threads". In the early 1990s, when Tim Berners-Lee coined the term "World Wide Web" and defined the first standards for HTML and URLs, the specifications included "USENET newsgroups for serial publishing and discussions." Berners-Lee also created what is considered by Encyclopedia Britannica to be "the first 'blog'" in 1992 to discuss the progress made on creating the World Wide Web and software used for it.

1994–2001

The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. A few called themselves "escribitionists". The Open Pages webring included members of the online-journal community. Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal blogging in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers, as is Jerry Pournelle. Another early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site in 1994. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance, and such journals were also used as evidence in legal matters. Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack's widely read journal, published via the finger protocol. Some of the very earliest bloggers, like Steve Gibson of sCary's Quakeholio (now Shacknews) and Stephen Heaslip of Blue's News (still running since 1995 with online archives back to July 1996), evolved from the Quake scene and Carmack's .plan updates. Steve Gibson was hired to blog full-time by Ritual Entertainment on February 8, 1997, possibly making him the first hired blogger. Another example of early blogging was the Poster Children online tour diary, started in 1995 by Rose Marshack. The blog was independently invented by Ian Ring in 1997. His online journal program was never called a "blog", and had very limited functionality, consisting of blobs of text associated with dates in an Access database. Ring experimented again with data-powered journaling in 2002, to provide a CMS for the popular health and wellness site SeekWellness.com, publishing weekly posts by fitness columnist Donald Ardell. Ring likes to claim that he "invented the blog", which is technically true even though there were other projects that could make the claim with greater authority. Another example of an early online entry into the evolution of blogging was created by Dave Winer. Winer is considered a pioneer of Web syndication techniques and has been considered one of the “fathers” of blogging. As the editor of Scripting News claims that his site “bootstrapped the blogging revolution and that it is the longest running Web Log in the internet.” Winer did not use the term "blog" and has never claimed the term. However he has gone on record as saying that “The first blogs were inspired by this blog, in fact many of them, including Barger's Robot Wisdom, used my software.” Websites, including both corporate sites and personal homepages, had and still often have "What's New" or "News" sections, often on the index page and sorted by date. One example of a news based "weblog" is the Drudge Report founded by the self-styled maverick reporter Matt Drudge, though apparently Drudge dislikes this classification. Two others—Institute for Public Accuracy and Arts & Letters Daily—began posting news releases featuring several news-pegged one-paragraph quotes several times a week beginning in 1998. One noteworthy early precursor to a blog was the tongue-in-cheek personal website that was frequently updated by Usenet legend Kibo. Early weblogs were simply manually updated components of common websites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging". Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using dedicated software such as WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger or LiveJournal, or on regular web hosting services. The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997— log in this case nods to a ship's log, a written record of a ship's navigation and speed read from rope knots off a special weighed tool called a chip log. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms. After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with History of blogging

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what History of blogging claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to History of blogging before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about History of blogging ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of History of blogging

In research: History of blogging appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses History of blogging in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: History of blogging is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Blogging, History of the Internet, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for History of blogging outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study History of blogging in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what History of blogging means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain History of blogging out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is History of blogging in simple terms?

Why does History of blogging matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study History of blogging?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on History of blogging.