notforprophet

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Xanga is like a pulsar: energy on, energy off, energy on, energy off. She loves me, she loves me not, she...

Sometimes I’ve felt the brave new embrace of community here, sometimes nothing but solitude within my own thoughts. It’s a quixotic commitment or remittance, either way.

You see, like any new-fangled thing, blogging is still defining itself and sorting itself out. Like any fledgling technology endeavor, it remains somewhat of an experiment within an experience. And, as experienced researchers will attest, some tentative thrusts in any rich trial environment will inevitably self-terminate while others hold out promise to radiantly scurry along. It’s somewhat similar to the onset of rapid evolutionary diversification concurrent with the establishment of a successful new lineage: many upstarts leading to evolutionary dead ends, yet still “life finds a way.”

So, too, is the milieu within Xanga. Let’s play Chinese fire drill. Or is it musical chairs? No wait, it feels more like a game of patty-cake. Am I still here? Where did the ya-ya go?

Change. It’s exciting. It’s dangerous. It’s unavoidable, unless you opt out altogether. But that changes the equation, too: batteries thus exuded.

The doubling challenge facing blogging as an imminent new enterprise arises from its birthing struggle to define itself both with a viable business model (software, sustaining customer base, capable servers, accommodating bandwidth, and more) and as a cultural innovation capable of enthusiastic perpetuity. In other words, providing a sound bottom line for a new literary form. Under one scenario, if the form culturally goes wildfire and proves itself to be much more than a fad, the funding, like Mary’s little lambs, will follow (a financial pull). Under another scenario, if ventures with innovative business models in the blogging market begin to yield lucrative returns, there will be provided many incentives for further elaborating and popularizing the form (a financial push). More likely, the endeavor will leapfrog by both pulls and pushes into greater and greater prominence.

What’s really encouraging, however, is that, regardless of the evolution of the business model, blogging as a creative outlet is a technology that is essentially individually self-sustainable. In other words, given the internet backbone alone (and, yes, that’s a big given, but does anyone doubt that it’s sticking around?), a savvy blogger can cheaply setup a self-sponsored blog on a self-owned “server” (your PC enhanced with free “server” software) with self-managing blogging software (again, several user-friendly offerings available free). I’ve done it at no additional cost (other than tinkering time) to myself. Hence, if the need arises or if you so choose, you can at anytime become your own blogmaster. This insular capability provides an important safeguard against over-reliance upon external providers whose finances could, in a less certain economy, collapse.

When will we know that blogging has truly “arrived”? 1) Financially? Simply, when PC manufacturers start packaging blogging applets/access/software along with operating systems. 2) Culturally? Simply, when blogging becomes a commonplace offering in school curriculums.

Whither goest thou now o blogger? Either—brightly or nigthly—yonder and morrow.