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Sunday, February 5, 2012

Justin Hall

We should take a moment to reflect on the work of Justin Hall. Justin was a pioneer, a visionary, at one time probably extremely depressed, and also a blogger. Not just any blogger. Justin was one of the first bloggers ever. His site,  http://links.net, was launched in 1994 and was a precursor of the technology you are looking at right this second. Sure there were other websites at the time, but Justin's provided something truly unique. In a New York Times piece he sums his work up quite concisely ''When I first started doing it, they called it a personal home page; then they said I'm one of the first Web diarists, and now I'm one of the first Web bloggers." His site's progression has been one that could serve as a Cliff notes for the Internet, starting off drab, and continually rethinking itself all within one site (thank you archives!). 

While it started off as a College project it simply continued to grow. He was eventually giving speeches at think tanks and chilling out with hipsters at SXSW, Sundance, and  Lollapalooza. He tried to hang up the towel in 2005, over general feelings of depression (who hasn't been there online), but his work continues. Of note is the general lack of frequency he posts updates to this work in progress. While he was one of the firsts to use the Internet for self-exploitation, he wasn't the last, and found it rather hard to back away even when given the opportunity.

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