Trying to explain what a “blog” is to Plagioclase’s mother, who has never looked at anything on a computer that we didn’t show her, is a little like trying to explain the concept of “blue” to a blind man. The frame of reference just isn’t there.
She was reading an article about political blogs, and asked “Where did blogs originate?” This is one of her favorite question patterns, right after “Do they _____ all over the world?” I don’t really mind these questions, because she’s showing that she’s interested and engaged, but I digress.
Anyway, Plagioclase and I tried to explain what blogs are. Sometimes it’s a journal, sometimes it’s a conversation, sometimes it’s single-issue and sometimes it’s far-ranging. And often a blog is all of these and none of them, like the non-blogs using blog software as CMS I’ve seen.
Then we tried to describe RSS feeds. Well, not the feeds, exactly, but saying that we can be notified when somebody we pay attention to has something new to say. (Some, of course, don’t say anything new, just different ;))
The web is, to her, like a television, where one can “be addicted” and “watch all day.” It is obvious when I talk to her that she’s not really approving of it — she refuses to watch TV during the day, because I think she thinks it’s slovenly. She thinks that we are just clicking through the channels of the web, waiting for something new to show up. At 3 in the morning, I may be. But I tried to explain to her that it was more like having the radio on in the background. You don’t pay attention to it until you’re ready — unless something really grabs your interest. I’m sure I didn’t convince her that I’m not really just a time-waster…
But the web, to her, is also like a vast reference desk at the library. “Look up this plant for me,” she’ll ask. When we talked about how there are some single-issue blogs, and that we have several blogs between us, she asked “What do you file them under?”
That’s when I realized that she still wasn’t getting it.
And decided to blog about it.