Vlog - Blog - Blah

Amidst the flowering of ‘user generated content’ and the growth of the web’s bigger, more dynamic second coming, could there not be more easily digestible terms to describe these tools? Sure, there’s plenty of room for silliness. You can haz all the cheezburgerz you want, I’m sure I’ll be amused. But can we not find better names for the meat and bones of the Web’s personal publishing and user sharing processes? Seriously. “Blog?” “Blog?” As a noun and a verb? “Podcast” too?

The issue seems to arise when ‘blog’ or ‘podcast’ comes up in conversation- particularly in reference to an argument at hand- when many people react by rolling their eyes. To be fair, perhaps it’s a matter of unfamiliarity; for the most part, neither podcasts nor blogs appear readily on Google searches. While the multiple uses of the former and the sheer volume of the latter are forcing people of all ages to accept the inevitability of these Internet functions, it doesn’t make their names any less silly.

Fundamentally, blogs and podcasts are an empowering process, allowing the voice of one to be transmitted among many, for free. While the risk of playing to a crowd may lay the foundation for hyper-separation and ultimately (gasp) more music elitism, the music-face to the blog landscape is still a liberating tool for self-expression and music discovery. It’s too bad that whatever it is- a growing trend, a movement, or a waste of time- it can be dismissed so anecdotally because it sounds so lame.

Daniel Wang - Twitchy & Scratchy || Balihu

Daniel Wang - Gotta Get Up || Balihu

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 11:30 am and is filed under Technology, Culture, Disco. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.