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twaddlesphere
As i'm sure many of you know, i reflexively recoil from the word "blog" and its by-products, but i especially dread "blogosphere". A bit of poking on Google gives me a page on Right Wing News (ick) that claims that it was coined by William Quick, the self-professed "Daily Pundit" (funny how most "pundit" bloggers are right-wingers):
I PROPOSE A NAME for the intellectual cyberspace we bloggers occupy: the Blogosphere. Simple enough; the root word is logos, from the Greek meaning, variously: In pre-Socratic philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of this principle, or human reasoning about the cosmos; Among the Sophists, the topics of rational argument or the arguments themselves. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language)
What a fucking blowhard, huh? "Intellectual cyberspace", my ass pimples. It's just nerds being nerds on the Web. There's nothing special about it, and it doesn't need a cute new term to describe it, because it is not a new phenomenon.
And, naturally, "blog" has nothing —NOTHING— to do with 'logos'. Just more people doing what the hell they want with language and justifying it with bullshit. Humpty Dumpty cackles with glee, for the time of his rebirth is at hand.
UPDATE: Scrolling down the page, i see that the term first seems to have popped up on Brad Graham's journal, and there he gives it the proper attitude:
Where are we headed? Will personal publishing soon be described as being "as simple as falling off a blog"? Shall we see ultra-conservative gays start weblogs and dub themselves Blog Cabin Republicans? Track the tides with an Ebb Blog? Is blog- (or -blog) poised to become the prefix/suffix of the next century? Will we soon suffer from (and tire of) blogorreah? Despite its whimsical provenance, it's an awkward, homely little word.
Goodbye, cyberspace! Hello, blogiverse! Blogosphere? Blogmos? (Carl Sagan: "Imagine billions and billions and billions of blogs.")
Also, this page has a comment where Brad is quoted as being willing to cede the credit to Quick (and, inexplicably, a URL that has no relevance to the quote), and really, who would blame him? I wouldn't want to be credited for a horrible word which i came up with via a clearly humorous, rueful effort.
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The word 'blog' dates back to at least 1999, and was apparently originated either by Peter Merholz or Jorn Barger, and entirely possibly each independently - the OED requires a print source to verify etymology (http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000222.html) and both run, you know, web logs. Merholz explains 'blog' (http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000205.html) as a shuffling of "web log" into "we blog". "Blogosphere" would be an extension of the network of blogs, 'blogger', 'blogging', and so on. He also credits the Blogger software package as propagating the word, which sounds highly plausible to me.
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ass pimples ahoy!
Once you've established that computers are involved, is there a useful distinction between "intellectual" and "nerdy"?
Re: ass pimples ahoy!
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REBLOGLICAN!