Blogs as a religion

Some days ago, Andres wrote the post Blogs ¿Tool or religion?. He expressed the opinion that blogs are a tool, not a religion. He's a Personal Branding professional and he uses his blog as an information channel. This vision is ok when there are profit goals. In my case, I write a blog in my free time as a hobby with an anonymous identity and I can allow myself to make a small joke about it. I choose the catholic religion because it is well known by me and it‘s easy to make a parallelism.

I think there are four columns which support the catholic religion: faith, liturgy, the faithful and the clergy. These pillars are easy to extrapolate to blogosphere. The parallelism between blogs and religion is structured in four parts: Genesis, The New Testament, Present and The Apocalypse.

Genesis

First there wasn't connection. The protocols were closed and autistic. DARPA said: “It is not good that the computer should be alone” and they created the Internet. Some time later the community around the net was formed only for initiates and it didn't grow up until a prophet called Tim Berners-Lee rose up from Europe. He invented the WorldWide Web (WWW). That allowed computers to connect to each other. He created the browser to navigate through the net. That caused many people to embrace faith in Internet and new communities based on the collaboration and meritocracy were developed.

But men forgot the right way and they started to worship to the golden calf (somebody called it The Free Market). They corrupted those communities and they created a speculative bubble that exploded a few years later. Faith was damaged and the communities suffered a “time in the wilderness”. After a long time in the darkness they could see the light again. Some groups built Content Management System(CMS) that allowed the development of the other communities.

The New Testament

Like Colombus's egg anecdote, Dale Dougherty had the idea to give the name Web 2.0 to all new things that happened in Internet.

In that huge egg, blogs were highlighted. The community of the faithful grew exponentially because they had “the Holy Trinity”: Blogger, WordPress and Myspace, three different platform and only one true blog. Like the miracles of bread and fish, blogs reproduced on “the face of the Earth ”.

The believers of blog had faith in free content movement, in collaboration and in transparency. Its was necessary to graze this disintegrating flock and blogs started to meet, first by language and later by region. The authors of blogs became known in directories and they linked among themselves. People wanted to know the relationship of the blogs and Technorati was created. Every body could see who linked him. That gave place to rankings and the race for a long-tail started. Whose was longer?

The clergy was formed with the first positions in the ranking. There were several types such as the cloister with closed comments, the Franciscans without advertising, the Salesians focused on education, the Jesuits with international projection and the Roman Curia made up of A-List bloggers with global influence. Somebody blinded by his ego started to speak “ex catedra”, someone thought that he deserved St. Peter's staff.

The clergy promoted a doctrine focused on lay brothers whose tails were very short. Besides The Ten commandments, they taught a blogger catechism structured in a quantitative form to learn how they could rise in the ranking, such as: 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers - Is a Blog Right for You?, 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog , 19 (More) Strategies for Finding Readers , 7 Ways to Get to the Top of the del.icio.us Popular Page, etc…But the lay brothers liked the bad blogger manifiesto and Ten advantages of having fewer visits, more.

The faithful and the clergy began practicing their liturgy in monthly parties named Beers&Blogs (B&B). Instead of wine they drank beer as an agglutinative element of the conversation. Bloggers talked in small groups as an alternative of the homily. Events instead of procession when lay brothers wore black clothes and the clergy distinguished themselves by their immaculate Macs. The Air was filled with Wi-Fi spirituality.

The graphic below shows a summary. Time that put everything in its place is represented in x-axis and Marketing which disrupts everything is represented in y-axis

Present

When the blogger clergy thought they were the blogosphere owners then the Masonic lodges arose. They were dark communities that selected and voted blogs entry. The first was digg and later they were cloned in local lodges such as menéame. They began to impose shady criteria to evaluate the post and astutely they called it democratic news. The faithful, confused by the mermaid song, hoped to improve their statistics and they put links to Masonic sites.

The Apocalypse

Blogs have their Apocalypse but not according to St. John. The Gartner consultancy said: : The end of blogs will be in 2007. It will be the crying and the grinding of teeth. The end of a wonderful dream.

Many thanks to my English teacher "Big Peter"

My broken heart

Continued from black Friday...

When my husband and I went to get the baggage, my laptop case was missing… I was confused because I couldn’t understand how it happened and I didn’t know when the thief had taken it. I couldn’t accept my terrible loss, first I lost my laptop and second my data because I hadn’t done a recent back-up.

My friend Muxfin says: A laptop is like a baby. It arrives naked and you look after it to fill it with knowledge and experience. When a laptop goes memory vanishes, but when children leave home only memories remain.

My mood changed from the incredulity to distress, I felt a pain in my heart, as if it was broken by sadness. I Never could see my fourth child, my lovely little laptop(1). I planned some actions to go back to the past. I thought if I bought the same laptop and the same case, maybe I could forget that black day like it never existed.

On Friday night I surfed on the Internet looking for the model of my lost laptop. I couldn’t find the same model and I had to broaden the number of brands and models. In a couple of hours I had a market report about the best prices. As it happens, the best shop was near home, so I went to bed a little relaxed.

On Saturday morning I got up early and I went to the shop. At 9:00 a.m. I ordered my new laptop but I couldn’t find the attaché case. I went to a big market but I couldn’t find either, then I bought it on the Internet. I only had to wait, but I haven’t patience.

On Saturday evening I started to feel anxious. I stayed at home and I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t sit down, I couldn’t watch TV, I couldn’t listen to music, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write… I Only walked from one place to another without a clear objective. Then I felt the need to have a drink.

I like drink beer, wine, and rum with friends when we meet in bars or parties, but I never drink at home when I’m alone or I’m sad. However , that day I had some rum and coke until I felt my heart beat without pain. I went to bed more relaxed that last day.

On Sunday morning, apart from my broken heart, the alcohol had evaporated from my body leaving my head in terrible pain(2). I had to drag my body all day, like a snake. Time passed slowly until I went to bed without alcohol in my veins.

A week later, I went to the shop to pick up my new laptop. I swore that I would never forget my lovely little laptop, more older and slower than the new but the best mate for me. Right now, four months later, I remember it with sadness and I even hope the police(3) will find my laptop and they’ll give it to me.


(1) When I came back home and I told my children that the laptop had been stolen, they told me: “we were lost our younger brother”
(2) Some bad tongues said that it was a hangover
(3) I told them the serial number

broken, heart, laptop, missing

Black Friday

I'll never forget the 24th of March. I was going to Málaga with my husband but we missed the train. We arrived at the station at 8:08, two minutes before the departure of the train when the train was still on the platform, but the stewardess didn't allow us to go through the passenger's gate because it was closed and the supervisor was on the platform.

The supervisor didn't have a mobile phone nor another communication gadget and the stewardess made gestures with her arms to get the supervisor's attention. it was a pathetic scene at a high technology station like Atocha-Ave. The supervisor didn't look at the stewardess and the train left the station, leaving us stranded.

We went to the Ave customers services office to make a claim. My husband was angry and he wanted to know the stewardess name, but she hid in the office. The person in charge asked us for the reasons of our claim. My husband didn't give her any reason and he asked her for the claim form.

The person in charge wasn't kind and she called the station's security guards and when they arrived, they asked us about the reasons for the claim again. My husband gave the same explanation as before. We called the police and they told us that we had to go to the station master office.

We went downstairs and asked a security guard for the station master office. He didn't know where it was (incredible incompetence) and he spoke via walkie talkie and said “the couple is here and are asking for the station master”.

Immediately another security guard came and he told us where it was, but he followed us as if we were delinquents. The station master wasn't in the office at that moment and we went to another Ave customers services office that was opposite.

When we went in, Jaime Ostos , a famous bullfighter from Ecija (1), was here. He had a problem and I tried to listen the conversation(2). He usually travels to Seville by train and he uses the Ave customers services office for personal business. On this occasion he was picking up his car keys that a friend had left in the office for him. He was wearing a narrow dark blue blazer but he wasn't thin enough for it. ¡Time passes even for the bullfighters!.

In this Ave customers services office, they allowed us to make a claim. My husband wrote (he writes slowly, like everything he does) while I made some telephone calls. Some people came in the office but I didn't look at them because they weren't famous (terrible mistake).

Finally, my husband wrote two pages (it took a long time) and we asked about how to change the train tickets. At that moment I wasn't angry although I missed the train. I thought the evening was funny, the pathetic stewardess made gestures with her arms to the supervisor, the security guards followed us as if we were criminals and we met Jaime Ostos. But the tempest was near, when we went to get the baggage my laptop case was missed.

But that is another story……..

train

(1) Ecija is a town near Seville. It is called “Andalucía's frying pan” because in the Summer it's very hot, about 50 degrees

(2) I'm a gossipy woman, of course

wait.... a moment