Communications, you say?

A fancy way to further communication within our society: blogging. I was talking with my mom the other day about blogging and I said, "So my teacher said that we could substitute one of our tests with a blog, even though it might be more work," but my mom cuts me off and says, "What?" I said, "Oh yeah, it might be more work but..." At the confused look on her face I trailed off and my sister-in-law said, "Blogging, it's like a journal online." Clarity dawned on my mom's face and I just smiled. It's so easy to be outdated now with technology rapidly becoming more and more complicated (or just evolving, rather).

So how great is it that we've added tools to keep everyone updated on our whereabouts and what we just had for breakfast. Blogging is the future but has it dampered our communications skills?

There are two sides to this. The other day in my Communications Theory class we discussed the consequences of Facebook; this is very similar. Facebook can lead to diminished face-to-face communications skills, bad health, bad grammar, unpopularity and a drop in productivity among many things. Blogging can be the same way and I've experienced this first hand. When there is nothing to do but homework a lot of procrastinators (such as myself) look for ways to put off doing work. I had a blog on myspace and a blog on Xanga and I must have posted two blogs on each page in the span of an hour. Talk about diminished productivity. People can get so caught up in blogging that it can become an obsession and take over your life.

But that can be the same for a lot of things. On the positive side, blogging can help you keep in touch with friends that live far away (or keep up with a long distance relationship), it can make your social and professional networking increase and it can help you sharpen your grammatical skills. I know that I use a lot of fancy words in my blogs that I wouldn't use in a natural conversation, but that's the fun of blogging: you get to sound like a professional.

So blogging can be good or bad, depends on how you use your time. Blogging is a great step for Communications because it's a way to discuss things (theories, concepts, Communications class) with the world fast, and without spending money on postage.