For an example, let’s take a quick look at the front page of yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer: “After weeks of blogging about the Philadelphia mayor’s race, Sam Katz has taken a step toward jumping into it.” Would that sentence have made any sense whatsoever ten years ago? If you’d have used the “b” word in 1997 (or 2001, for that matter), most people would have wondered, “what the hell is ‘blogging’ (and is it legal)?” Now, most readers would pass right over it without really noticing. New tools lead to new practices lead to an entirely new vocabulary.
White House email scandal? Email’s an older technology and an older word than “blog,” but it’s still only become ubiquitous in the last decade — I can remember talking to folks in DC in 1996 whose organizations were “going to get email in the next six months or so.” Now, electronic mail might just bring down some folks at 1600 Penn.
(See previous article on this theme here.)
– cpd