Paul Bradshaw just posted a blog posting the question as to whether it's possible to define blogging without mentioning technology.

Is it possible?

No, I don't think so.

As I mentioned in my previous post there are three types of technology:

Replacement technology - that which replaces a process we already have, but makes it easier.

Enabling technology - that which enables us to do things that were either not possible, or too time consuming to be worthwhile before the technology.

Ubitiquous technology - technology that becomes so widely used and pervasive that it becomes a part of the fabric of society, and is taken for granted.

Blogging, I think, has become an ubiquitous technology - not in terms of it's pervasiveness across society (though I'm sure some would argue for that claim) - but in terms of it's functionality.  Until blogging became popular, the only people who has access to a mass-audience were journalists.  Blogging has initiated a conversation between people, who are otherwise unconnected.  I don't twitter to my friends, many of whom view the technology as pointless and 'geeky' - however, I do twitter to some folk, from whom I've been able to generate business leads, ideas, and other opportunities.  It's not a pointless task.

So many things happened to allow blogging to take off as it has done.  The idea of 'planets' of bloggers give a sense of community, though not always known.  This blog has been submitted to planets with my blessing, and others have added it without my knowledge.  Pingbacks, and comments are the most powerful parts of blogging - the actual 'blog' itself is very rarely valuable in itself.  However, with links to other blogs, and a variety of opinions proposed by the readership, a blog can grow into more.

When we talk about 'things we used to blog' now appearing on twitter, identi.ca, facebook, flickr .etc - we're not talking about the blog articles, but the comment and conversation generated from them.  We've removed the time-consuming layer of having to set out ones ideas before being able to discuss them.   We're conversing live, we're using sources and media - and we're enjoying it.  As bandwidth increases, people are doing videoblogs, podcasts - all of which are extensions to blogging.  Blogging is a technological marvel - to remove the technology would mean a blog would become an individual's diary.  In is the 'interconnectivity of all blogs' (Douglas Adams would love this) that gives them their value.

I sent a message to Rory Cellan-Jones on deadline day, asking that the BBC's "Live Text Feed" be made available as a RSS feed - so that rather than having to stay on the page and continually refresh, RSS messages could pop up in my chosen reader with any new developments.  What a simple - Web 2.0 idea.  However, this isn't the kind of thing that the BBC can implement in a few hours, so I ended up watching Sky Sports News instead.

The other thing that disapoints me about the BBC is their coverage of the lower leagues in Rugby Union - I'm sure others of you are also fed up that your particular sport isn't that well covered by the BBC.  Today, I was watching the F1, and with gwibber (a twitter/identi.ca client) open on my laptop, I started updating my 'feed' with the latest in the F1 race.  Sure, I didn't provide a particularly insightful commentary, but the feed was available for people to read - although they could also quite easily stick on ITV for terrestrial coverage.

However, there are lots of sports events that don't get the coverage required by the fans.  I'm thinking of setting up some kind of central 'hub' to which fans can subscribe to, in order to get updates about their particular sporting event.  Given that 'tweets' are by default short enough to type in a simple text-message, you could suddenly turn a non-league football match into a hive of community-commentators, with views from both sides evenly expressed.

Of course, this thing isn't going to take off right away - and if someone knows of a site that already does this sort of thing, then I'd love to know.  If you too want to work on this sort of project, please get in touch.  Knowledge of Django/Laconica/Twitter - even better!