by Rob Paterson
December 14, 2007 at 7:56 am
· Filed under Andy Carvin, Blogging, Enterprise 2.0, NPR, Social Media
Andy Carvin will be on air on Morning Edition talking about the history of Blogging and its impact on society. In preparation he asked for help on identifying milestones.
Here is the list that he is currently considering – he and I both agreed on the first – unusual one - What do you think?
1st Century BCE: Julius Caesar writes De Bello Gallico, raising the bar for military bloggers more than 2,000 years later.
1690: Benjamin Harris of Boston publishes the first independent newspaper in North America, presaging the golden age of late-18th century American pamphleteers. The four-page broadside left the final page blank so readers could add their own comments and news stories before passing it on to another person. The paper was a flop.
1776: Thomas Paine, unofficial blogger-in-chief of the American Revolution, publishes the influential pamphlet Common Sense.
1945: The Atlantic Monthly publishes Vannevar Bush’s As We May Think, which examines the future of knowledge and prophesies the development of the Internet, desktop computing and personal publishing, among other innovations.
1984: The creation of Listserv, the first email discussion group software.
1986: The launch of Cleveland Freenet, one of the first “community networks” through which residents could post community updates and discuss local issues.
2003: Iranian Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi launches his own blog, well before many U.S. politicians catch on to the idea.
2003: In one of the first major audio blogging experiments, public radio host Christopher Lydon publishes mp3 files on a website, using an RSS feed developed by Dave Winer so people could subscribe to them. That same year, Winer would organize Bloggercon, one of the first national gatherings of bloggers.
2004: Ben Hammersley, in an article for the UK Guardian newspaper, described the audio blogging technique used by Lydon, Winer and others as “podcasting,” creating a whole new industry without even knowing it.
2004: Videographer Steve Garfield launches his video blog, a blog containing video clips, and declares 2004 “The Year of the Video Blog,” more than a year prior to the birth of YouTube.
February 2004: The launch of Flickr, a photo-sharing community that helps popularize photo blogging.
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EspenDecember 14th, 2007 at 10:18 am |
Well, there is always Samuel Pepys, Chief Secretary for the English Admirality, with the first CEO blog (though, arguably, the fact that he encrypted it and that he wrote most of his diaries before he got to that exalted station might speak against him as a candidate.) Certainly qualifies on the “tell-it-all-meter”.
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EspenDecember 14th, 2007 at 10:18 am |
OH yes, forgot the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys
Hi Rob,
Actually, those are just the newest additions I’m including in the second draft. The first draft also features these milestones (including Pepys, btw):
Unknown: Mariners begin keeping a “log book” to record the speed of their ships, measured by “heaving the log,” throwing overboard a piece of wood or lead attached to a long rope with knots in it.
Early 9th Century: Chinese philosopher Li Ao publishes one of the first known diaries, a travel journal entitled Lainan Lu (”Record of Coming to the South”).
17th Century: Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn publish journals that are among the earliest diary best-sellers in the English language
1812: London publisher John Letts begins selling blank “page-a-day” books intended to be used as personal journals and business ledgers.
1966: James T. Kirk (William Shatner) begins an episode of Star Trek with the words “Captain’s Log: Stardate,” inspiring a generation of young diarists eager to document their own life events by any means necessary.
1967: The Internet is invented.
1979: The birth of USENET, a decentralized system of discussion boards, forming the basis of some of the Internet’s oldest online communities.
1983: Brian Redman creates mod.ber, a USENET discussion through which he and his friends post summaries of interesting things they find online and offline.
1989: British researcher Tim Berners-Lee proposes the development of the World Wide Web.
1990: Margaret Lanterman, aka The Log Lady, begins dispensing advice and prophesies that supposedly emanate from the wooden log she carries on the TV series Twin Peaks. (It remains to be seen how much of an influence Lanterman is in blogging history, but I thought I’d err on the safe side and include her just in case.) Hat tip: Jim Long
1992: Berners-Lee launches the first website. Among his publishing innovations that year is the first “What’s New” page, a Web page that places new updates at the top of each page, pushing older items down to the bottom.
1994: Claudio Pinhanez of MIT publishes his “Open Diary,” a Web page documenting goings-on in his life. At the same time, online diarist Justin Hall would gain notoriety for creating a “personal homepage” on the Web covering his day-to-day activities in very revealing – and occasionally embarrassing – detail.
1994: Brian Lucas launches travel-library.com, a collection of online travel journals submitted by the public to the rec.travel USENET group.
1995: Vermeer Technologies releases FrontPage, one of the first Web publishing tools. Introduced the idea of allowing people without coding skills to publish websites.
1996: The 24 Hours in Cyberspace. Thousands of people use the Internet to collect photographs of people whose lives were affected by the Internet. An early experiment in collaborative photo blogging.
Feb 1997: Steve Gibson hired by Ritual Entertainment to journal on a full-time basis, making him one of the first professional bloggers.
Dec 1997: Jorn Barger uses the term “Weblog” for the first time to describe his online journal, Robot Wisdom.
1998: Open Diary becomes one of the first online tools to assist users in the publishing of online journals. Would later be followed by other journaling tools including LiveJournal (1999), DiaryLand (1999), Pitas (1999) Blogger (1999), Xanga (2000), Movable Type (2001) and Wordpress (2003).
Spring 1999: Online journal writer Peter Merholz jokingly takes the word “Weblog” and splits it into the phrase “We blog.” Over time, “blog” would supercede “Weblog” as the term of art for describing online journals.
1999: Development of RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. Made it easier for people to subscribe to blog posts, as well as distribute them across the Internet, such as the early news aggregator Radio UserLand. (Hat tip: Joe Germuska)
2001: Big-name bloggers begin to emerge, including Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit)
2002: Bloggers focus their attention on comments made by Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) at a birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) that appear to endorse segregation. After intense coverage in the blogosphere, the story spreads throughout the media, forcing Lott to resign his leadership position in the senate.
2004: Bloggers play a major role in covering the presidential campaign; a number of them are credentialed to participate in the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Dan Rather resigns following pressure from bloggers who documented errors in a story about President George W. Bush’s military service record.
2005 (?): The launch of some of the first blog search engines, including Feedster and Technorati, making it possible for people to track blog conversations on a continuous basis.
2005: Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard’s Berkman Center launch GlobalVoicesOnline.org, an international network of bloggers emphasizing local and regional stories around the world that aren’t being covered by mainstream media.
March 2005: Garrett M. Graff becomes the first blogger to receive credentials for the daily White House briefing.
2006: The launch of Twitter, one of the first “micro-blogging” communities that allows user to publish and receive short posts via the Web, text messaging and instant messaging.
2006: Research report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project estimates that 12 million U.S. adults publish their own blogs.
2007: Technorati is tracking more than 112 million blogs worldwide.
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