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BLOG HISTORY
Howdy-doo chappies and chappettes. This is a clip from Blogumentary going back in time, showing a bit of weblog roots and evolution. Some context: This clip follows an interview with Rebecca Blood talking about how the early webloggers were explorers, combing the web for interesting links and adding a bit of commentary.
We ramp up to 1999, when LiveJournal and Blogger both opened the blog frontier to non-techies. After a fast-forward sample of that blog explosion, we jump back to ancient history... Samuel Pepys, and American Revolution pamphleteers - aka the original citizen media.
Blog History [Quicktime, 12 MB]
Speaking of blog history, my belated farewell to one of the first black bloggers: Aaron of Uppity-Negro.com. I'm sorry to say I did not know him. But George did.
September 22, 2004 at 04:23 AM in Blogumentary | Permalink
Comments
Nice film! On a tangent, have you seen pepysdiary.com? It's his diaries published on the web, with annotations and historical context provided by readers in the comments. Personal journal come full circle.
Posted by: kokeshi at Sep 22, 2004 7:24:34 AM
Congratulations Chuck, I like the rhythm and pace of the edit. And you found great archive footage. One thing struck me tough... just a detail and please feel free to ignore it: Vivaldi´s Four Seasons? I´m sorry but from you I expect more ;-). It´s been used to many times, and it was only published in 1725. That segment refers to Samuel Peeps and 1660, right? Like Layne used to say, just being anal, I suppose... Miguel.
Posted by: msd at Sep 22, 2004 9:20:01 AM
Great film! You can certainly leave it just as it is, but as a teacher I think it would be more useful if it went in chronological order. You might also want to include the massive correspondance of people such as Leibnitz, Madame deStael (sp?), Jefferson, etc. Many of these letters were written to one person but meant to be read among friends, copied and circulated. I LOVE the description of the growth of news/entertainment connected to the growing passivity of the masses.
If you need different music, no need to look farther than Handel's water music. He was a contemporary of Pepys.
Posted by: pyork at Sep 22, 2004 12:22:40 PM
Great film! You can certainly leave it just as it is, but as a teacher I think it would be more useful if it went in chronological order. You might also want to include the massive correspondance of people such as Leibnitz, Madame deStael (sp?), Jefferson, etc. Many of these letters were written to one person but meant to be read among friends, copied and circulated. I LOVE the description of the growth of news/entertainment connected to the growing passivity of the masses.
If you need different music, no need to look further than Handel's water music. He was a contemporary of Pepys.
Posted by: pyork at Sep 22, 2004 12:23:59 PM
Thanks for the great feedback!
Yes, the Vivaldi is über-cliché... Handel is a good idea. I of course wanted to bang people over the head with "OK, WE'RE GOING BACK IN TIME NOW!"
I hear you about chronology. For the most part it is, but ye olde-tyme history is an informative diversion. I can't really start there since the film is about blogs. Later I'll post my intro to the film, followed by Rebecca Blood and this segment and we'll see if it flows.
Oh, and thanks to BoingBoing for the link. See if you can spot Cory Doctorow for a split second.
(Kokeshi - Yep I've seen the Pepys Diary site.)
Posted by: Chuck at Sep 22, 2004 2:00:09 PM
Wonderful work, Chuck. And the voice-over is actually pretty good, IMHO.
Posted by: Ryan at Sep 22, 2004 5:44:56 PM
Thanks bro.
Umm. This clip was viewed 1,100 times yesterday. Probably a bunch today. That's like, a few theaters full of people - cool!
My bandwidth usage is probably going to hit 20GB this month. Whew.
Posted by: Chuck at Sep 23, 2004 7:13:58 PM
Great film! You can certainly leave it just as it is, but as a teacher I think it would be more useful if it repeated everything twice.
Posted by: xian at Sep 27, 2004 8:08:23 PM
Thanks! I'll do that.
Thanks! I'll do that.
Posted by: Chuck at Sep 27, 2004 10:51:51 PM
Awsome job on it. Keep it up.
Posted by: tyler at Jan 21, 2005 3:57:46 PM
I liked the piece and really can't wait to see the interview with Rebecca Blood. I think it's incredibly important to point out that traditional blogs weren't diaries but, as Rebecca mentioned in her Sept 7 2000 post, web filters. Would love to see how this weaves in with what you've got so far.
Posted by: Steph at Feb 20, 2005 3:38:53 PM
Since this is a historical blog, I would like to make an observation. We
have in the 20th Century and 21st Century given the title of American
Caesar to General Douglas MacArthur, but honestly I believe we are
over looking someone that truily for a time was much more like Caesar to
us than the good general. I am talking about Abraham Linclon the 16th
President of the United States. Mr. Linclon was one of the most powerful
Presidents of our time, boardering on near dictatorship levels of power.
Mr. Linclon suspended the writ of hadeous corpus, and many other civil
liberties protected by the Constitution of the United States, he also
tried civilians in military courts, and had soldiers summarily shot
without court martial for falling asleep on watch duty. He instituted
the countries first military medal, the purple heart, without consent
of the Congress and push his powers to vast hieghts never seen before
or since with any president. And like Caesar he was shot and killed by
a man that he, Linclon himself, admired. Boothe was one of the United
States most well known and saught after actors of his day. Linclon offered
once to shake his hand after seeing him in a Play in a northern play
house. And we've even given our Caesar our "Divis Imperator" his own
Greek-like temple, the Linclon Memorial. So I say you, the real
Amearican Caesar is Abraham Linclon.
Posted by: Matthew Hayden at Aug 18, 2005 3:00:49 PM
Thanks for commenting on my video about the history of blogs.
You're right, Abraham Lincoln was really the first American blogger, and a right bastard.
Posted by: Chuck at Aug 18, 2005 5:37:53 PM
Who in the Hell ever argued that MacArthur was an "American Caesar?" Maybe this was a homework assignment for someone: post an unrelated short essay on a random blog; 10 pts.
Posted by: Jonathan at Aug 21, 2005 11:55:26 AM
