I love working in the computer industry, if only for the "gosh-wow" you experience every couple of years, when you come across a new trend or technology that is going to impact your life in some way. I can distinctly remember the joy I experienced the first time I encountered and realized the impact of each of these:
MP3 trading (2000)
Designing web pages (1995)
Search engines (1995)
Web surfing (1994)
Usenet (1991)
Email (1990)
Programming (1979)
Video games (1978)
Computers themselves! (1977?)
Blogs, like the one you're reading now, have to be considered the first real major web trend of the 2000's -- I just did a Google search for a particular band and seemingly half the matches it found were from people's blogs. I even saw a book in the bookstore the other day, containing a bunch of essays from people extolling the wonders and philosophical implications of blogging.
And yet, blogging as a whole seems to me to be a wholly dissatisfying trend, as far as "gosh-wow" is concerned. There'd have to be some new technology involved for me to want to include it on the above list. It's a rehash of old ideas, and is ultimately a selfish and exhibitionist endeavor. As such, it will fade out, much in the way personal web pages did. Remember when almost everyone on the net had a web page containing nothing but information about themselves? (Myself included, of course.) Would blogging even be that big a trend if someone hadn't decided that shortening "weblog" to "blog" would be a cute thing to call it?
Still, I'm enjoying (co-)creating this page, and am glad you are reading. I hope I can ride out the trend.
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