log begat web log begat blog begat primordial ooze

Blogs aren’t really what they are or were supposed to be at least by the raw definition of the term.  Inevitably boring and certainly unnecessary if not utterly tautological (as is the term “utterly tautological”) is any well-known and understood definition. Nevertheless, for the sake of philosophically and academically sturdy rhetoric, nothing tacit remains tacit. Unlike the word “irony,” whose accidental demonstration in its own definition doubly reinforced when gone unnoticed, not even the word “tacit” is a given.

We know about the web. The simple posting of a log, for any purpose, on the web is merely a log on the web. Any phrase’ or term’s frequent usage facilitates its linguistic streamlining. Made public, the frequent reference to such a log, differentiating it from logs kept in other media, as if such things existed, facilitates its linguistic streamlining into “web log,” further truncated to “blog.” “Blog” adds a more popular, hip linguistic ballast delicately teetering toward connotation rather than actual denotation when used in the most recent socially agreed context. Dawg! After floating its cycle through the cloud of popular usage, like all things once popular, even as the more oft referred-to,  though less frequently rolling stone, a word fallen from frequent usage gathers a kind of linguistic moss. That is when the subject that word represents is no longer fashionable, its time has passed. It is now passe, indeed. The mere mention or hint toward the subject invites rolled eyes of all offended, blushing and tacit-but-well-understood status reduction of the offender.

Noun

• S: (n) log (a segment of the trunk of a tree when stripped of branches)
• S: (n) logarithm, log (the exponent required to produce a given number)
• S: (n) log (a written record of messages sent or received) “they kept a log of all transmission by the radio station”; “an email log”
• S: (n) log (a written record of events on a voyage (of a ship or plane))
• S: (n) log (measuring instrument that consists of a float that trails from a ship by a knotted line in order to measure the ship’s speed through the water)

Verb

• S: (v) log (enter into a log, as on ships and planes)
• S: (v) log, lumber (cut lumber, as in woods and forests)

WordNet home page

And so, this is a blog by default. It is not really a blog. It would not be a blog by any other name. This is a bunch of stuff, a public collection of personal writings with the open invitation that anyone might participate.

Not much else.