Blogs and the Digital World

We live in a digital, technology based world. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. If someone would have asked me just a couple of years ago if I was a technically oriented person, I probably would have laughed in their face. I knew how to use a computer, yes, but that’s about where my tech expertise ended.

It all began to change during my Senior year of high school. I joined the student council, and in my infinite wisdom decided that since so many kids were using the internet, we better have a website. I decided I was going to learn web design, signed us up on a free server, started a Hotmail account, and set to work building a site. It was going so well that I even convinced the advisor to upgrade to a pay site in order to allow us more bandwidth for posting pictures and such.

All was well for about six months, until one day I was shocked to discover that our harmless little site had been blocked on the school computers. Now naturally, I wanted to find out why. After all, this was the student council, not some kind of porn site. Well, I was then told that the district was not allowing any school groups to maintain pages off of their server. Plus, students would no longer be allowed to maintain it without being carefully watched by staff. They unblocked the site for the remainder of the year, but there was no one with the interest to keep it up after I left. It never made it onto the district server, and it died an unceremonious death upon my graduation from Mounds View High.

That experience left me with a fairly bad taste in my mouth as far as technology and education was concerned. So, for the first year I was at BSU, I pretty much reverted back to my semi-technophobe self. I used the computer for papers, email, research, and instant messaging, but I was pretty sure my website days were over. I still had the itch to get “back in the game”, but on the other hand I thought maybe I was better off without it.

Then last year, I caught the tech bug again when during fall semester, I figured out how to use Front Page, and became pseudo-webmaster for the Student Senate. Come spring, I took the Writing for Secondary Teachers course, where I was introduced to the CAL Dialogue and to something called a wiki. I immediately took to both, and posted like mad. I was working on the web again and I loved it.

Because I liked posting to the wiki so much, I decided to enroll in the Weblogs and Wikis course this fall. Little did I know that my affinity for the wiki would be matched, even surpassed, by a love for the journal-like things we call blogs.

In the last four weeks, I have become enthralled with the concept of blogging. I usually post once, sometimes two or three times a day. Some are short, some long. Some are funny, some serious. But it’s all me. I see it as a limitless tool for self expression and discovery. And, with the archives, I will be able to look back months, even years from now and see what I wrote about on a given day. Yes, I could do that with a paper journal, but there’s no telling if I could actually read it…anyone who’s seen my handwriting can attest that it is pretty bad.

Along with keeping my own blog, I have also taken to reading others’ blogs. In my class, the class before me, even complete strangers. I’ve also been surprised to discover how many of my friends keep them. It’s amazing how much you can learn about a person, even someone you’ve known for years, just by reading their blog. From intensely personal revelations about family, friends and even sexuality, to random musings on politics and the news of the day, it’s all there. Reading blogs also builds a community of bloggers. I frequently comment on and link to things I see in other blogs.

Not long ago, Professor Morgan told me he had me pegged as a wiki guy. He’s not entirely wrong, I still enjoy the wiki. But, I’m becoming a genuine blogaholic. I not only maintain my own, but have sucked Senate into the mix with three other blogs. Plus, I post to the Daybook, which means I now belong to five blogs, and I’ve only been doing this for a month! Reading and writing blogs is like eating a can of Pringles…once you’ve started it’s near impossible to stop. Blogs have an almost addictive quality. I’ve told friends in recent days, who are bloggers themselves, that we ought to start a program called Blogaholics Anonymous. Because it’s true folks, my name is Berne, and I’m a blogaholic.