Jyothi Kiran
It reminds you of William Baldwin in the movie Sliver, as you snoop into the virtual thought beds of desis in cyberspace, scrawling across from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. The only difference is that, in the movie, Baldwin spies on the private lives of his tenants unauthorized, where as on the web, the private notes are self published, self-censored and open for public consumption. Welcome to the world of weblogs, where the line between the private and the public has paled, where folks regularly log on their most intimate feelings compulsively in their online diaries.
Who are these web-loggers? They come in all ages and from all walks of life. They range from young students to senior entrepreneurs writing about emerging technology, media, religion, sex, politics, cricket, films; you name it, and they record it in their online journals. From unabashed narcissists, racists, feminists, peaceniks, confused philosophers, coffee lovers, lazy geeks, faceless scribes to solitude seekers, you will find a remarkable variety of writers with equally interesting weblog titles: Lessons From Solitude, scribbles of a lazy geek, Knowledge El Dorado, dancing with the dogs, Brain droppings, abhi naheen to kabhi, Like butter, smooth n creamy, etc.
Most of the blogs you run into are about technology, media, books and culture. Not surprisingly, most men talk about technology- new gadgets and gizmos, where as women talk about feelings, children and relationships-to have or not have them. But, you get the feeling that Indians are not very comfortable writing about sex as much as they are writing about politics and cricket. Women seem to be more open about their feelings where as men drop hints about relationships. It is quite amusing that most men were not able to digest the fact that India couldn’t make it as champions of world cricket. They had to do something else to take it off their mind, like watch a movie or go hiking.
Almost all Indians are anti war, they feel the Iraqi invasion was illegal and they lament the war casualties on both the sides. But when it comes to national interests, there are quite a few bold voices ranting against ‘secular morons’ and advocating racist views.
Come home to books and literature, and you will find that most Indians are incredibly well informed and well read. It is amazing how CEO of Rediff.com Ajit Balakrishnan takes time from his busy schedule to write about The Grapes of Wrath, and the Gordian knot that India has to overcome. However, majority of the literary musings on the desi blogs, are moody, whimsical, verging on existential nothingness.
And the media- loggers? They are quite a disillusioned lot who moan its present penchant to commercialization and groan the way Indian media has covered the Iraq war. A journalist’s diary deplores how "Doordarshan spilled out the taxpayer`s hard earned cash to put out huge advertisements, with pics of the entire Third Eye staff, claiming to have the best coverage of all! AIR`s news is even worse, with no correspondents on the ground, and a pathetic borrowing from DD`s contract with Third Eye. This, for a monopoly broadcaster with a billion-strong captive audience.."
Interesting inside information like these is hard to come by via mainstream media. This kind of information is valuable and sometimes crucial as it happened in the case of a politician who lost his votes because a weblog revealed his racist leanings.
What is fascinating about reading these weblogs as against reading a media report is that you get to know more than just about the subject matter; you get to know what the writer is thinking about the subject, which adds a novel dimension to a mundane account. For instance, if you were to read a journalist’s diary, you get to know not just about an event but also what the scribe thinks of a particular event and how that has been covered by the media. That’s three stories rolled into one!
Also, the mainstream media has space and airtime constraints. Can you tell everything you know in 400 words or in a sixty seconds report? If you can, how much of a story is that? Thanks to weblogs, now you can not only tell the entire story at your own pace, without the hassle of deadlines, but also write without any editorial filters, now that’s true freedom for a writer. And the final thrill about writing a weblog is that, it promises instant celebrity status of being published, but with the added advantage of remaining anonymous, if you choose to do so.
Back to the climax of the movie Sliver, where Sharon Stone in a fit of rage, blows off all the television screens with a pistol, screaming at Baldwin, "Get a life!" In cyberspace, you need not feel guilty of invading any privacy. Instead, witness an explosion of feelings and thoughts even as it’s being recorded. Read the tales of a million strangers as they note down their little triumphs and failures, their aspirations and disappointments, their rage and their fears, their ideas and their poetry- In short, what you get to see in weblogs, is an entire library of live autobiographies, written not by celebrities, but by ordinary people like you and me.
Contact: jyothik@iijnm.org
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A Dummies Guide to Weblogs If we have to thank Sabir Bhatia for popularizing e-mails through his hotmail service, and Tripod and Geocities for making homepages trendy, the credit for making weblogs a rage goes to Evan Williams of Pyra Labs Technology. Weblogs became popular when he started offering free blogging service three years ago on his website www.blogger.com. Last year, Newsweek ( 26 Aug. 02) cited over half a million bloggers on the net, a new addition every 40 seconds. The numbers have since then multiplied. Weblogs have become such a hit that often the mainstream media picks up ideas from them. For instance, during the Iraq invasion, some warlogs had more page views than popular news sites, prompting Google to buy up blogger.com [S: CAN`T LINK IT] where a number of weblogs on war were hosted. A weblog is a journal of events or thoughts, chronologically posted on the net and updated with a lot of hyperlinks. Some people update these weblogs daily, others less frequently. Unlike regular websites, they could contain a lot of personal information and are people friendly, and are therefore often referred to as P2P or people to people technology. But unlike personal homepages which are not necessarily interactive weblogs allow instant communication with the writer. For instance, if you have posted an anti-Bush comment you can expect a lot of people with similar views posting replies on your weblog: the opposite can also happen which can lead to some nasty comments. But then that is the whole point of weblogs: there are no filters, but lots of raw emotions on these self-publishing web communities. Weblogs are updated using a blogging software which allows instant publishing. This doesn’t require either writing skills or web-publishing skills. Neither does it cost a lot of money; it only costs time and effort. So anyone with an Internet connection can have a blog of his or her own. Just like there are any number of companies that allow you to have e-mail ids, there are many companies that let you publish your weblog on their servers. For starters, try some of the popular blog services such as blogspot.com; blogger.com, and eatonweb. Recently, rediff.com has also started offering blogging services. Of course free blogging services are very basic HTML pages. For those who want more than hypertext in their blogs and are willing to pay for software that allows multimedia and other hi-tech capabilities, there are content management companies like Userland selling software for professional blogging. Some net savvy entrepreneurs are selling merchandise on their blogs. And there are bloggers who include message boards, audio, video streaming and online chatting on their sites. Not all bloggers use words to communicate, some say it with pictures, others with voices.
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