Cha on Web Blogging

Web logging, or as it’s now popularly called (because of the wonderful evolution of language and universal laziness), “blogging” has taken over most people’s internet time. It’s been used for all sorts of purposes from news, editorializing, entertainment to good old porn lit and insomnia fix for night owls who just can’t sleep. While journal-writing had previously been a very private and intimate activity for people who loved to write and preserve their thoughts and memories in paper, now it’s been transformed into a whole new species. Online journals are not only about the content of what one wrote, but html, java script and web design, comments, polls and what have you.

Take my personal blog for instance. As the 336 thousandth user in livejournal, I started blogging in 2001. I was in my sophomore year in college and the internet is just beginning to become popular in the Philippines. There were very few Filipino users in livejournal and most of them were in the States. I had three active blogs, or online journals as I used to call them. They serve no particular purpose but to satisfy my narcissistic desire to publish what I wrote on prettified web pages accessible to strangers. I made “friends” with other bloggers who comment on my entries. Soon there were talks of eye-balling (EBs) or meeting with the online friends in person. The spectacle of blogging spawned a new way of meeting people, gave birth to a community.

Anything online back then was attached to the connotation of being nerdy or geeky. After all, one has to be pretty interested in the computer to spend so much time writing and encoding what one wrote in html, personalizing the appearance of one’s web page and so on. But the technical stuff ends there. Ultimately blogging is about writing, reading other people’s blog entries, commenting and replying to comments. One only has to be interested in communicating to get hooked.

Now, blogging has been simplified with sites like livejournal and blogspot that provide clients, which make modifying your online writing as easy as Microsoft Word. The proliferation of easy-to-create blogs provided by sites like friendster, recently caused the number of bloggers to multiply exponentially. Blogging has broken out of the geek community and has infiltrated the masses with every young friendster addict making his/her own blog. It’s insanely phenomenal.

I look at my four year-old livejournal and pat its digital head; it’s come a long way, baby.

Note: I realize I didn’t explain why we called our blog “the bunk bed battle.” See, we’re room mates and we sleep in bunk beds. And we argue, very diplomatically like proper ladies. And we’re very literal, too. I’m sorry to announce, though, that the above explanation will become obsolete by 2007, because I’ll be moving out and in to an old maid’s dorm somewhere in the campus.

-cha

Confessions of a (Former) Functional Luddite

I’m not what you’d call a huge fan of technology. I only use a computer for typing papers or watching movies. I don’t play computer games or photoshop pics or burn cds or download music. I don’t surf the internet unless I’m looking for something specific or occasionally checking my email. My phone is far from fancy – no camera, no music player, no bluetooth. I thought the color screen and polyphonic tones were its most advanced features, until my sister activated the WAP/GPRS service - which I don’t use either. And I would still be stuck with my ancient desktop had it not been for a hand-me-down laptop which I feared to touch at first, for fear I would somehow hit its self-destruct button. (Obviously, this is my first blog. Since this is my very first blog entry ever, forgive me for not discussing any policy issues yet.)

I have survived knowing only the barest minimum about technology. Fancy gadgets are wasted on me because I don’t have the patience to read through manuals. I don’t enjoy fiddling with new hardware or exploring new software either. And it’s not only because of lack of interest - the unfamiliar fazes me. I know tech stuff is supposed to make my life easier but I am still resistant because I think it’s just so darn complicated.

I’m not proud of the fact that I’m a non-techie. In this day and age, technology is inescapable. Even for a career in law – where I thought it didn’t matter if one wasn’t tech-savvy – it is fast becoming vital to know more than Microsoft Word. A lot of legal research is done online, particularly for foreign sources. Lex Libris is a must-have resource. Templates for various legal forms help cut down work hours. Cyberlaw and IT-related intellectual property law are new, exciting, lucrative areas of specialization.

Even the Philippine judiciary has recognized the need to keep up with the times. The Supreme Court launched a program to provide computers to all courts and its website is continuously being upgraded. The situation is far from Singapore’s “paperless courts” but the mindset is very progressive. Technology is being harnessed to meet the ends of justice.

Where does that leave me? I don’t want to be roadkill on the information superhighway, so I’m slowly adapting to the times (I signed up for the class, didn’t I?) I have recently bought an mp3 player - one with the simplest features (baby steps!) – at first out of necessity (it helps tune out noise when I study). But I’ve enjoyed organizing my music files and I like the convenience of carrying my own music everywhere.

With this awareness of how helpful (and fun!) technology can be, I’ve become more open to new things. I still won’t qualify as a techie but I’ve recently installed a desktop search engine and acquired a wireless notebook adapter. How’s that for baby steps?

And yes, I now have a blog.

-bodee