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Where did blogs come from?
Seth Roberts tells us, with some excerpts from my email with him. Julio Cortazar is important because he tried to write a novel -- Hopscotch -- that could be read in either of two sequences, or more. Similarly, a blog should make sense whether read from start to finish, every day, or finish to start. That imposes both constraints and opportunities...
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 13, 2007 at 09:59 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
That's an easy one.
Blogs came out of .plan files and a convergence of web technologies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol
John Carmack, as a more famous example, started using .plan as a way of keeping people up-to-date on his latest work way back in 1997.
http://doom-ed.com/blog/1997/03/
Posted by: Xmas at May 13, 2007 10:24:43 AM
But why does that make Julio Cortazar ~important~?
Posted by: Austen at May 13, 2007 11:07:58 AM
blogs never really give the sense of a singular experience like Hopscotch does -- as though, by sheer chance you happened to read this after that. But that's the nature of the narrative
Interestingly hypertext novels (ie Shelley Jackson's The Patchwork Girl) fell out of vogue just as blogs took off, and since then no one -- that I have heard of -- has attempted blogging a novel (or fiction literature of the Hopscotch kind.) One could also compare hypertext lit to videogames, which also provide a singular experience for the user alone
Posted by: joanne mcneil at May 13, 2007 11:21:46 AM
When I was young, there were "pick-a-path" adventure books that would provide a semi-unique experience for the reader.
I believe the movie "Clue" tried something along these lines.
Posted by: fustercluck at May 13, 2007 1:07:33 PM
hunter thompson. gonzo journalism
Posted by: m g at May 13, 2007 2:08:01 PM
Hopscotch: An instruction manual.
Posted by: mickslam at May 14, 2007 8:26:52 AM
Coincidentially (to my knowledge, at least), Ted Nelson coined the term "hypertext" in 1963, the same year that Hopscotch appeared.
Posted by: RSA at May 14, 2007 11:32:40 AM
joanne mcneil:
Hitherby Dragons is a blogged novel.
Posted by: Douglas Knight at May 15, 2007 10:17:16 PM
