:: Birth of the blog ::

The following is a creative essay entitled "The Birth of the Blog" that I did as a way of explaining to my fellow students the historical context behind blogging, online activism and the image versus text representation debate from Communications/Cultural Studies.

This essay was read in class as a lead-off to my November 28 oral presentation on blogging as a form of active response against online corporatization.

In the beginning there was the word.

The word begat sentences.
Sentences begat paragraphs which strung together
into a language that the people
could use and create themselves.
Through this, language begat communication
and communication begat meaning.
Meaning became understanding
and understanding gave birth to pleasure.

Thus did the people look at the word,
the beginning of it all.
They said the word and proclaimed that it was good.

Then along came someone who asked,
“why can we not represent what we see exactly?
Why do we have only words
to show what we see is real and around us?”

And the Image was born.

And along with the Image came the Company.
The Company begat a Brand
and the Brand begat the Message.
Through the Message came its offshoot, control.
Because of control
born of the Company and its Message,
Image began to wall off itself from the word.
Image began to compete with the word.
Image used colour and motion
to illustrate to the people that only the Company
could be trusted to provide their meanings and pleasures
in the online world.

The people saw the image,
experienced the motion
and they believed.
They turned their back on the word.

Until, one day, it happened.
Another person came along and said,
“see? In this place, controlled by the image,
the word is still alive.
It is there, it has meaning.
But the meaning is yours to create,
yours to control, yours to decide.
Take the word, go out there and multiply.
Bring the word to the people,
for them to decide
their meanings, their pleasures in the online world”.

And so they did.

For a copy of my presentation, drop me a note.