Happy Blog-day to you and your tribe

Ten years ago – heck, maybe even five years ago – if I had told my co-workers I’d do some “blogging” this afternoon, I would have gotten some very odd stares, to say the least. But here we are. Blogging – posting short written items to a “Web log,” or running online diary of sorts – has become ingrained in our culture. Most people who are online have read them; millions have created their own. I mean, it’s a verb.

As the Wall Street Journal reported this weekend, 2007 marks the 10th anniversary of the blog. That date is squishy, admittedly. Online journals and discussion logs can be traced to well before 1997 – even Usenet groups in the 1980s, before there was a Web. Science fiction author Jerry Pournelle claims to have the original blog, although he hates the word.

But by consensus, 1997 is "a reasonable point at which to mark the emergence of the blog as a distinct life form,” the Journal says. If there is a magic date, it is Dec. 17, 1997, when Jorn Barger coined the word “Weblog” to describe his posting onto his site, Robot Wisdom, of short commentaries, Internet links and cool stuff he found online. The term was quickly shortened to “blog,” and Barger’s innovation has been accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary. They’re everywhere now: Blog search engine Technorati reports it is currently tracking 92.4 million blogs, plus more than 250 million “pieces of tagged social media.”

Blogging has turned into a major force in politics, of course, both as a way for candidates to get their message out and for online pundits to hold politicians’ feet to the fire. It’s huge in the legal profession, too. Law blogs – or “blawgs” – are a genre unto themselves. Public officials such as California Appeals Court Justice William W. Bedsworth have their own blogs. Even when they shouldn't.

Following your favorite blogs can be addictive. But is it worth it? Novelist Tom Wolfe told the Journal he no longer reads them. “The universe of blogs is a universe of rumors,” he writes, noting Marshall McLuhan’s prediction that modern communications would “turn the young into tribal primitives who pay attention not to objective ‘news’ reports but only to what the drums say …” The tribe has spoken. Or posted.