The Invision and Invention of Blogging

In the article ‘As We May Think’ by Vannevar Bush, 1945, he talks about his career and innovations. One such innovation he imagined was the Memex, which was a desk with a built-in “computer,” where people could create, share, and collaborate on articles with one another. As Dennis G. Jerz publicized back in 2003, this idea was more accessible than ever before with the creation of Weblogs, where anyone could create a blog post—not just a web designer or programmer

As Erin Malone mentioned, one of the greatest ideas from Bush was “hypertext,”—as we now know it as—which allows for the ability to search for content from inside of the content, rather than the old literature way—through the index. Jerz announced the purchasing of Pyra Labs, who owned one of the biggest weblogs, at the time, named Gillmore. Some people were afraid the world of news reporting would be diluted with the easy access for the everyday person to create a blog post, with Google being the most powerful search engine, using hypertext to rank websites—both on a web search and Google News.

Today, the world of “weblogging” has evolved to not only have a textual format but blogging through images, such as with Instagram and Pinterest’s food, fashion travel, lifestyle bloggers, and video bloggers (or “vloggers”) on YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok. There are still older-fashioned ways of weblogging, such as on WordPress (which I am using right now), Medium, etc. I do not feel like weblogging has diluted the world of online blogging or reporting but has enriched it with its access for other people who may not have had the privilege of knowing how to code to have the ability to spread their message; get their voices heard.