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I was instructed to read a book and write a book report for one of my classes this passed weekend, so read I did. While I wished for the simpler days of writing reports on Maniac Magee and Ramona Quimby, I did actually enjoy reading about blogs. The book started way back in Benjamin Franklin's time explaining how newspapers became popular and tracked the same trends to the current state of the blogosphere. To summarize the book in one sentence (though my essay had to be 4 pages), when social change and new technology merge, watch out institutions cause the general public is coming for you!
I heard a speaker this week talk about the desires of different generations. When I was a child the most popular desire was to be in a group or feel part of something. Today's youth want more than anything to be famous. Applying this to the discussion of blogs I can't help but agree with the speaker. Blogs began as a way for people to be heard. Bloggers posted their thoughts and opinons simply because they hoped someone might read them and they could feel connected. Today, everyone has a blog or maybe even a vlog. Everyone posts what they think will gain them followers because it is no longer about being heard by someone, but by everyone. Bloggers give the people what they want instead of writing what they want. It has become a commercial institution, which is the very thing it was created against.
By reading this book (The Rise of the Blogosphere by Aaron Barlow) I feel like this is the cycle of things. Newspapers were started as a way of posting the local gossip, but later became dramatic retellings of the news; whatever would sell the most papers. Youtube used to be a free service to upload videos and watch other's videos, but now you must sit through advertisments. Facebook was once a community solely for 1 campus, but has grown into a company whose profits come majority from ad space.
I wonder what the next big trend will be (and no I don't mean a trend on Twitter) and how long it will take the institutions of the world to find a way and commercialize it. Then again, if the current generation is like the speaker says, they may just commercialize it to begin with.