Daily Blague

As the Daily Blague approaches its first anniversary, and I consider the different kinds of Web logs that different people maintain, I wonder whether the future holds more variety or less. How many bloggers have passed the "let's see what this thing is all about" stage? How many will continue to post once they do? When will the blogosphere cease to be dominated by IT workers?

That blogging began as a way of keeping friends up to date about new developments on the Internet makes perfect sense, but it's just as obvious that this robust format would proliferate in every direction. I detect a note among some veterans, Jason Kottke among them, of rededication to Foundational Blogging (my term), of distaste for long written entries, which seem to be associated with punditry. Mr Kottke remarked the other day that something he'd just come across reminded him of an article about blogging written by Julian Dibbell and published at Feed (an online magazine) in 2000. The article is still worth reading.

A Web log really, then, is a Wunderkammer. That is to say, the genealogy of Web logs points not to the world of letters but to the early history of museums -- to the "cabinet of wonders," or Wunderkammer, that marked the scientific landscape of Renaissance modernity: a random collection of strange, compelling objects, typically compiled and owned by a learned, well-off gentleman. A set of ostrich feathers, a few rare shells, a South Pacific coral carving, a mummified mermaid -- the Wunderkammer mingled fact and legend promiscuously, reflecting European civilization’s dazed and wondering attempts to assimilate the glut of physical data that science and exploration were then unleashing.

This is very apt, and I'm glad to have it. But I've found that the Wunderkammer opened up by the Daily Blague has been a network of associations running from things happening in the world through my brain and out to other things that I'm reminded of. Only some of those externalities are situated on the Internet.