Innovation can alter our ways of life. Fifteen years ago, no one knew what a smartphone was. Who thought you could use a cell phone as a laptop? The advent of the light bulb made life after the sun went down possible. Another thing that made life possible was air conditioning. The American South was an unbearable place to live because of the heat, but the invention of air conditioning transformed a backwater into a thriving region. We can order a pizza or clothing from a desktop or a phone. We didn’t imagine we could do our whole shopping without having to go to the local mall, but shopping changed because of Amazon.

Social media has changed things in our world as well. I can attest that it allows me to connect with old friends. It can even allow me to find new friends. Social media isn’t as popular these days as it once was, but for good or for ill, platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have changed our world.

Innovations bring change which means innovations come with a cost. One of the things it has changed is the demise of the weblog or blog. I can remember setting up my first blog in 2002. Over the aughts, I would spend time opining on politics, religion, and other issues.

Until a few years ago, blogs were a way for people to get ideas out to the wider world. People were able to share their views in a way that took time. It took time to write those posts and it took time to read them. A number of my friends blogged and if you were to go back to the mid-aughts, you would see a number of prolific bloggers opine on religion and politics. I loved blogging, but over the last few years, I’ve blogged less and less. Andrew Sullivan was one of the first, but there was Megan McArdle, Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam, Daily Kos and many others that were out there sharing a new way to look at the news. Today, blogging doesn’t have the same cache it did 15 years ago.

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