Hello out there in Fiction Dailyland!
Today, Figuratively Speaking takes on the log … or, as we know it today, blog.
Why all the fuss about blogs?
From the first cave paintings, we human beings have shown that we think we’re somehow significant … that our thoughts, our reflections and our conceptualizations merit a record.
Thus, the log was born. As a noun, it can mean
– an official record of events during the voyage of a ship or aircraft
– an apparatus for determining the speed of a ship
As a verb, we have to log
– to enter an incident into a ship’s record
– to achieve a certain distance
Of course, we have the ubiquitous log on, log in, log out, log off.
The idea of a ship’s log comes from the Middle English sense of the word log as a “bulky mass of wood,” so there is a notion of heaviness. Determining the speed of a ship was done by using a thin quadrant of wood which was loaded to float upright in the water and whence, “ship’s journal,” into which information about the log board was recorded.
So from that humble, well, log, the log was born.
These days, with thousands of people connected to each other online, we share our own personal logs prolifically. Gone is the journal of old … why pen a private diary when you can broadcast the details of your life to the world?
Enter the blog, which is short for Web log.
Let’s not forget, however, one of the most beloved logs of all time … The U.S.S. Enterprise, whose “Captain’s log” led us through strange events on other planets, every week, compliments of James Kirk.
So I am signing off this captain’s log, and wishing you pleasant seas.
Just testing comments … happy reading!!