Soccer Dad

Evolution of a blogger

Last week Pillage Idiot asked me a question that brought me back to usenet newsgroups. They're not as popular as they once were but are still around. They've been supplanted by blogs. I used to participate in some newsgroups. There was a Star Trek one and the famous soc.culture.jewish one. I know a couple of bloggers who used to participate in usenet. (Actually Usenet still seems pretty active. I suspect it's mostly the domain of the academy now. Blogging is sort of like Usenet for everyone.)

But I go back even further. To Bulletin boards. (Now I've probably lost half my audience!) In the 80's with you're PC running dos with a really fast 72k 2400 bps (thanks biur chametz) modem you could call up local numbers of people hosting computer bulletin boards and post your opinions on just about anything. I used to participate in politics (surpirsed?) and sports discussions. Many of these bulletins boards weren't just local, they were connected by FidoNet.

I guess I haven't ever had much of a problem expressing myself. Even before that, I got used to calling sports talk radio shows. (Actually the purpose there wasn't simply to listen to the sound of my voice, but to practice thinking while I spoke. A good exercise for a stutterer.) And about this time I also started writing letters to the editor.

As time went on I eventually dropped off the bulletin boards. Why? I don't remember.

Eventually I was introduced to Usenet. Usenet even today can be an excellent resource. (Microsoft has quite a few newsgroups for their various products. If you ask on the appropriate board you'll probably get an answer within a day.) But I used to keep track rec.arts.startrek to get the best reviews of the newest episodes of Star Trek: TNG or DS9. (Once we got into the Voyager years there wasn't much of interest. Tim Lynch, the primary reviewer, gave up after one year.)

Somehow that evolved into an interest in mailing lists. And I subscribed to the Orioles mailing list to which I'm still subscribed today. (Of course there's not much activity there. Not only have the Orioles been mostly bad for the past 12 years, they haven't even been interesting. I've noticed that two of the contributors are now bloggers. Even if one of them hasn't blogged in months.)

Eventually, I started e-mailing people articles about Israel with comments and discovered that some people were doing the same thing and had people visiting them. (Some of my early discoveries were Instapundit, Little Green Footballs and Meryl Yourish) These were bloggers and I was sending out an e-mail blog. (I also got encouragement from a friend to dispute Thomas Friedman's reading of the Middle East.)

So I got started on Blogger ( 1, 2 and 3 ) Eventually, I moved to baltiblogs with the encouragement of Presence a little more than two years ago.

UPDATE: Anyone who wishes to share his/her history of blogging. Feel free to let me know and I'll link to you.

FELLOW GEEK Elder of Ziyon adds his online history. I'm pretty certain that I remember him from Mail-Jewish.

And ANOTHER, this time it's Jack's Shack with his history starting with chat rooms and graduating to message boards.

Technorati tags: Blogging, bbs, usenet and mailing lists.