In
1996,
Internet browsers that can display images on
the World Wide Web had been around for 3 years.
Search engines such as
WebCrawler and Lycos were 2. Amazon, eBay, Internet Explorer
are all 1
year
old.
Yahoo does not yet exist.
The
term
‘Blog’ has yet to be coined.
Web 1.0 is still
being formed.
You probably didn’t have an email address.
I’d
had a
really bad day at work. I needed to find a
cute pic to email a co-worker who had been exceptionally kind.
A quick
non-Boolean search in WebCrawler pulled up about 7,043 hits,
and
without the
advanced algorithms of today’s Google experts,
any html page containing either
the word ‘pic’ or ‘cute’ in it’s list of meta tags was fair
game.
Quickly
scrolling down,
I spied the words ‘Carolyn’s Diary’. Diary? Diary? On the web?
Can it be?
Can you really put your diary on the world wide web for all do see?
I
printed
out seventeen pages of this stranger’s
personal diary and pored over them all the way home,
one eye on the bumper in
front of me, the other on the gold on those virtual pages…I
did
eventually
thank him,
but Phil never got his cute pic. I’d found something much,
much more
important.
Turns
out, I
wasn’t the only person fascinated with a
stranger’s personal thoughts painted all over our collective
‘digital
cave’
(taken
from the subtitle of Rick Smolan’s 24 Hours in Cyberspace,
whom Carolyn
became
the poster child for;
and whose photo adorned the invitations to the unveiling
at the Smithsonian Institute on January 23, 1997 http://www.ryze.com/go/clburke).
I
was
instantly obsessed. I spent the entire evening
composing my first email to her. With a readership of 10,000,
my mail needed to
be crafty enough to catch her attention. It was. With no reply
at all,
she
brazenly (in my opinion)
copied my email and linked to it from random text in her diary
the
next day.
http://diary.carolyn.org/Page23.html (click on ‘should be fun’)
This
continued for a time. We were creating a new kind
of art, together, for the world to see, complete strangers,
linked only via our
written words. It remains to this day one of the most
fascinating
processes I
have ever been a part of.
http://diary.carolyn.org/comments/louise/index.html
By
the fall
of 1996, I had scraped together the bare
minimum of skills required to do
it
myself.
So on October 18, 1996, my Electronic Pen, or The mEp, was
born.
http://www.vif.com/users/louern/mep.htm
On
paper,
since December 2nd 1977, I was an
archivist; keeping merely a record of my daily life.
Nothing private, nothing
secret, nothing I wouldn’t want my great grandchildren to see.
In fact,
it’s
written for them.
The
World Wide Web was a big anonymous place in 1996, perfect for
letting my personal trees fall in the forest of the digital
cave.
research
on early blogs
Ignacio Siles
“Twirl,
the
world
chant the breeze
roar the engines
swell, the seas.
When
the
focus is like a pinpoint in your eyeball
paining the view but presenting an image,
we must force the horizons
to become distant, and near, at once.
Mentor,
friend,
and fellow seeker of truth;
take my hand and tell of your sorrows.
Spill what you know onto a page i can keep.”
“How could I possibly be arrogant - I'm one of the nicest people I know ...”
Dedicated to Carolyn Burke
What ends?
I've got a little story
to tell.
It's a story made of chapters, but it's not a book. It's a
metamorphosis, but
it's not about change.
Full of ups and downs and all arounds, but it's not our
lives. It's made up of beginnings, middles and conclusions ...
but it
doesn't
end.
The infinite inspiration
that
writing with you has brought to me has grown into something
more than
words on
the web.
Years later, as the pages continue to flow from my fingers, I
find
myself contemplating what does end.
from the first, to the
present,
and throughout the journey in between, has emerged to me one
thing
which can
never end.
embodied in your open spirit, deep honesty, and gentle
laughter, is
a gift which cannot be taken away.
a gift which cannot be written, changed, nor
lived.
that gift, my dear friend Carolyn, will never come to an end.
and from somewhere endlessly inside of me, I thank you.
l
spring 1999
"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you"
Khalil Gibran, Sand
and Foam" (1926)