Are blogs a thing of the past? "Weblogs" were created in 1997 and shortened to "blog" in 1999.
Let's see. While my blog should absolutely be no indication, a rough skim through the archives showed that I wrote the most entries in 2002 - 2003, and 2007.
2002 and 2003 were the years I spent in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. Blogs had just popped up and were the rage then. We spoke of nonsense and blogged about the frivolous and mundane. 2007 was a year where I slipped between being jobless and doing unsatisfactory work. Granted that topics discussed were less mundane, one can also attribute that improvement to mental maturity.
Then I had one lonely post in 2009 and two miserable ones in 2010. This was a period where I was so caught up with work I was barely home. So in my case, posts were relative to the amount (and interest) of work I had. And this time, it is no different. As of 31st May 2011, I left my job in hope of pursuing a Masters degree. And as it turned out, here I am, posting an entry.
So are blogs a thing of the past? Judging by the new means of media today, I would say no, but it is highly threatened by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. The mundane in daily life has found an outlet as incessant 'updates' on Twitter. And Facebook is a well-thought, intelligent and under-constant-improvement form of media for people to provide, share and distribute thoughts and content.
Twitter and Facebook should be a solution for me, to post thoughts even if I'm busy at work. After all, it doesn't take very long to post a short message. And I don't disagree. In fact, I login to Facebook nearly every day and I enjoy instant connection to it on my iPhone. However, Twitter and Facebook (status updates) are likely culprits to the dearth of mental exercise people participate in.
I thoroughly appreciate the amount of information I receive through Facebook every day. Its system creates a visually appealing presentation of a link, instead of a text link, making information spread fast and wide. I've spent many hours watching viral videos, reading on cures of AIDS, learning about Osama's death, etc all through the constant feed from my friends. But you can see the pattern of high input and low output. With Facebook doing all the work for you, the mental and creative capacity once regularly used are now dangerously unfit. Any discussion about why you like it, how much you like it and how you can apply this, is stifled to a 'like' button. Sure, leave a 140-character comment, because we're all about superficiality aren't we?
This General Election Singapore 2011, we saw our ministers and opposition leaders take up (more) interest in blogging and communicating through social media. The Online Citizen and the Temasek Review must have seen an all-high pike in visitorship. Interestingly, only blogs would satisfy the huge demand, seeing that political discussions obviously cannot be settled in 140-character posts.
Writing and blogging forces you to exercise your vocabulary and grammar. Writing an entry also makes you think if you're writing about something that's worth the time and effort. And just before you click that "Publish Post" button, you skim through your article to check for errors or embarrassing typos. In a way, it's a form of leaving your mark in the world so you do what to ensure you can stand by what you write.
To be a really big hypocrite, I'm not really going to edit my post to reword my sentences like I usually do because I have 6.5 books waiting to be read. Instead, I'm going to hope my incoherent sentences may be of some sense to someone who reads this lonely blog. Cheers!
