Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx 2002
Workin' my way through my Bronx archives. I do wonder sometimes what the real purpose of this and other blogs is? Is it pure ego? If I had enough money would I still be - and then it struck me that the original purpose of this blog anyway - was to try and attract an audience by sharing the "photography" process so that people would remember the site and hopefully buy something someday. So this was a commercial idea from the beginning. Whether that worked or not - hard to say.
Of course since 1999 when I began writing what I then called a journal - the number of photoblogs has mushroomed. So it's really not a novel idea now. Were there even blogs in 1999? I mean blog software?
I guess that video blogs, and podcasts are the latest and greatest way to be published and not seen. The melting point is being reached when my 82 year old dad and my 4 year old niece are bloggin'. (Okay, she's not four, she's five.)
But when you reach the point where every human being on earth over the age of (fill in the blank) has a blog... I just wonder -
What does it mean when that diary that you used to hide under the bed is now public. Do we have less secrets?
There have been stories about job seekers who have not gotten jobs because of their blogs.
"I'm sorry, sir. But even though your resume and qualifications are fine - we see that on June 23rd, you stole two bottles of beer from the local bodega. How do we know? You wrote about it in blogger, sir. And since we are a brewery, well you see sir..."
But will there be other unforseen consequences of world-blogdom? One thing I wonder about is the usual blog format of last entry first or in computer gibberish: LIFO (Last In First Out).
When an ongoing story is told now - you have to scroll down to the bottom and work your way to the top. But no one does that - I think they read the story backwards, from top to bottom, in reverse order, one chunck at a time. Will they have to start printing books backwards: Last Chapter First - First Chapter Last.
Will there be a new reading disorder: BS (Blogger Syndrome).
I guess we'll have to just see and wait, uh wait and see.
