Square knots in cyberspace
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By Jussi Ahlroth
"Blog" is sometimes translated to mean an Internet diary. This is slightly problematic. Some blogs are indeed electric and public diaries in which the writers ponder their lives. However, there are also many other kinds of blogs - for instance, those focusing on news, hobbies, or politics.
In fact, there are so many different kinds of blogs nowadays, that no common denominator can be found on the basis of content. A blog is made a blog by the technique that is used. A blog is a medium of publication, and a means of publication that emerges from the medium.
The great strength of blogs is somewhere other than in turning a diary into an electronic, and a public medium. The word "blog" itself is a key to understanding that they are something more than diaries. The name comes from the words "web log".
Whereas the log of a ship describes the movements of a vessel on the ocean waves, a blog often describes the writer's moves in the space of the Internet. Blogs often contain links to interesting websites, that the keeper of the blog has found.
Combined with the link, there are often thoughts that the writer has about the news, photograph, or even a film trailer that can be found through the link. These blogs bring order to the huge mass of the Internet. Blogs are hubs on the net, which make it easier to visualise the web as a whole.
For these reasons, good blogs are the best that the Internet has to offer. These log-type blogs are much easier to read, than a diary-style unravelling of a the anguish of a person's life, which used to be squeezed into first novels. Fortunately, most of them are left unpublished, and rendered to grateful oblivion.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.12.2004
More on this subject:
 Internet breaks locks of personal diaries
FACTFILE: From a log book to a trusted friend
Movement on the fringes of the self
JUSSI AHLROTH / Helsingin Sanomat
jussi.ahlroth@hs.fi
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