The term has become so common that most people don’t know that “blog” is a condensed version of “weblog.” It is not a new form of communication, by any means. People have been blogging since man began painting on cave walls, really; it’s just that the tools have changed and the definitions of writing styles have evolved a bit (but just a bit). When the Internet was still without its graphic interface, the World Wide Web, there were the bulletin boards and file-sharing services that allowed the distribution of text files.
Even though the Internet traces its roots way back past Al Gore to the DARPANet (Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) in 1969, not every article in that era was a description of biological weapons or a flight-simulator log. People would rant, discuss, argue and hold forth on any number of topics. The term weblog seems to have started, some folks say, with one Jorn Barger, who would “surf the net” (not his phrase) and keep a log of what he found interesting, then comment on some of it. As words have a way of doing, “weblog” became “blog” and now they’re everywhere, and everyone has one.
