“I think there were ‘blogs’ before the world wide web,” writes Jared Pereira, “in the form of people’s home directories and all, but I might be wrong.” This technically would not be feasible, strictly-speaking, as the blog was dependent upon the web.

Most pre-web discussion spaces, and I guess most post-web discussion spaces, are chronological in form, not reverse chronological as is the blog. There’s at least one proto-blog concept mentioned on Wikipedia which I’d never heard of before, however.

[In] late 1983, mod.ber, was created, named after and managed by Brian E. Redman; he, and a few associates regularly posted summaries of interesting postings and threads taking place elsewhere on the net.

In other words a kind of linkblog, but via Usenet newsgroup because it was 1983 and the web did not yet exist. It’s possible, I suppose, that people were keeping online diaries within other spaces and forms, such as bulletin board systems, internet-based or otherwise.

This does have me wondering: was anyone proto-blogging via text file diaries accessible using ftp or even gopher, before the web?

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Referring posts

• While casually dismissing the idea that there were...