Energetic, encouraging responses to the two pilot issues of our blog, The Hanson Gazette, has inspired us to press onward with development. A casual reader might wonder why. After all, the world wide web offers more than 600 million blogs, which provide more than 6 million blog posts daily for a total exceeding 2.5 billion posts annually. 

We have learned, however, that some of our readers wonder “Just what is a blog?” Our preface will first address this basic question and acknowledge the work of some outstanding scientists to whom the whole blogging enterprise owes its existence. Their work has provided the technological infrastructure and tools upon which our blog and other blogs rely. Readers who wish to bypass our discussion of technology and blogging are advised to skip to the final two paragraphs of our preface. 

For those readers who wonder “what exactly is a blog,” we begin by explaining that the term “blog” is an abbreviation of the term “weblog,” and is defined in The American Heritage Dictionary as “a website that displays postings by one or more individuals in chronological order and usually has links to comments on specific postings.” Today, nearly one-third of all the websites in the world are blogs. 

This has not always been the case. The world of blogging grew from an information technology infrastructure, which took decades in the making. This infrastructure developed in several key stages–the centralized mainframe, personal computing, the client/server era, and the cloud. Cloud computing, or storage and accessibility of data and programs over the internet instead of within the individual computer’s hard drive, was developed more than a decade after blogging achieved some popularity, but has facilitated the prodigious growth of the activity. The Hanson Gazette derives from cloud-computing crucial benefits including mobility, enhanced capabilities for collaboration, loss prevention, and disaster recovery. With the risk of damage to technological devices in a war zone, such safeguards become ever more crucial. 

Several key developments in information technology can be cited. These provided eventually the basis on which blogging emerged. In the 1960s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) funded research into the time-sharing of computers. The American computer scientist J. C. R. Licklider, while leading the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at ARPA, proposed the idea of a universal network. In 1981 the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which permitted the worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks. TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States for researchers, first at speeds of 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s. Advances in semiconductor technology and optical networking created new economic opportunities for commercial involvement in the expansion of the network at its core and for delivering services to the public.

In mid-1989, MCI Mail and Compuserve established connections to the Internet, delivering email and public access products to half a million users of the Internet. Just months later, on 1st January 1990, PSINet launched an alternate Internet backbone for commercial use; one of the networks that added to the core of the commercial Internet of later years. In March 1990, the first high-speed T1 (1.5 Mbit/s) link between the NSFNET and Europe was installed between Cornell University and CERN, allowing much more robust communications than were capable with satellites. 

Six months later, Tim Berners-Lee began writing WorldWideWeb, the first web browser, after two years of lobbying CERN management. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9, the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the first Web browser (which was also an HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP files), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server, and the first Web pages that described the project itself. The Mosaic web browser was released in April 1993 and was later credited as the first web browser to find mainstream popularity. The history of actual blogs reportedly dates from 1994. 

The first blog on the Internet was created in 1994 by a student named Justin Hall. He intended for it to be a place to share his writing. The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger [9] on December 17, 1997. The short form, “blog”, was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog, Peterme.com in April or May 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used “blog” as both a noun and verb (“to blog”, meaning “to edit one’s weblog or to post to one’s weblog”) and devised the term “blogger” in connection with Pyra Labs’ Blogger product, leading to the eventual popularization of the terms. By the end of 1999, the internet contained 23 established blogs. During the decade which followed blogs wer2e seen mostly as personal diaries — each being an individual’s own virtual space where thoughts, ideas, and experiences were shared. An early example of a “diary” style blog consisted of text and images transmitted wirelessly in real time from a wearable computer (a small device capable of storing and processing data that can be worn on the body) with a head-up display. 

Subsequently, a deluge of more varied blogs has poured into the internet. Blogging has gone from a hobby where thoughts can be shared online to the currently vast online activity which has in many cases been monetized. 

Personally, I have never adopted technological advances until they have become very well established and circumstances have demanded their use. My own generally tardy embrace of new technology has benefited from the encouragement which esteemed colleagues have provided. I shall never forget a summer evening in the early 1990s when sitting next to me during dinner in the WISE Foundation tent, the brilliant scientist and distinguished educator Bob Humphries informed me of an important new tool for communication, namely email. Fast forwarding, let me thank my young colleagues Tristan Palazzo and Aiko Ma for their essential contributions in laying the technological groundwork for our blog, and my capable right hand, Anna Calvagna, for her administrative genius. Needless to say, such shortcomings as will be found will be my own. 

So now, in the remaining two paragraphs of our blog, let us mind the why and wherefore. Where do we aim in launching our blog? How do we propose to justify our effort and to earn the attention of our readers? What drives us to move ahead with the project? Do we have a sound raison d’être? As the originator and senior editor-in-chief, I find that some experiences in recent years have sparked my effort. A brief summary of these may help to clarify the blog’s mission and philosophy. In recent decades I led another small project, the WISE Foundation (WorcesterInstitute.org). This leadership experience taught me that small-scale efforts can sometimes address gaps ignored by grander projects. Please allow me to provide some illustrative examples. The WISE Foundation was able to undertake beginning in 1990 to provide opportunities for medical students and performing arts students in the former East Block. Also, after the Embassy of the USA to China moved from Taiwan to Beijing, we were able to respond to the increasing neglect of Taiwanese students through larger programs such as had been previously provided by our Federal government. We were also able to offer crucial opportunities for educational advancement to outstanding individuals who needed a new door to open; examples include a brilliant young German historian of science who, due to academic politics, had abruptly lost a faculty position in Scotland, a talented fledgling fashion designer, and artist from Bordeaux who had gone bankrupt in Paris, and a gifted early career actor from England who had won an opportunity to perform with a theater company in Boston but initially lacked housing. 

In what might be termed “flying under the radar,” we were able to bring ballet students from the xenophobic Kirov Ballet School to Massachusetts where they collaborated on projects with American dance students and musicians. We were able to meet and provide direct aid to struggling Palestinian students in the West Bank while also providing opportunities for Israeli medical students. Though recognizing the preeminence of the annual Elliot Norton Awards by the Boston Theater Critics Association, we also perceived that worthy talents at an earlier stage of professional development receive very little in the way of achievement awards, even though early career performers may experience much-needed validation from such recognition. We, therefore, established an early career awards program in the performing arts. In summary, my experience in running a small foundation for several decades has taught me that small-scale efforts can sometimes address gaps left by more massive projects.

At the outset of the pandemic in 2020 the WISE Foundation, recognizing the catastrophic mismanagement of the pandemic at the federal level in the USA and the impossibility of continuing ongoing projects, wound down its activities and transferred its assets to the partner foundation in Budapest, Alapitvany WISE, in a country where the pandemic was much better managed and the incidence of COVID-19 much lower. Meanwhile, having been heavily involved in inpatient hospital service, I retired from my psychiatric work and in April 2020 became an online graduate student in the English Department at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). There, I endeavored to hone such potential skills as I may possess as a writer. 

My decision to initiate a new blog owes much to SNHU Professor John Gist, whose encouragement, guidance, and course in creative nonfiction have emboldened me. His course focused on a writing style found especially in publications such as The New Yorker. 

Primarily in our blog, we endeavor to provide narratives in a style found in that magazine and others such as The Atlantic and Harpers, and in books such as Anne Applebaum’s “The Twilight of Democracy.” We aim to explore and analyze events that other publications have largely or entirely neglected. My two visits to Ukraine since February 24, 2022, have shown me that innumerable such events are occurring and otherwise overlooked, true stories of heroism, dogged determination, and ingenuity. Such stories from that beleaguered country should be told to secure increased help from the free world. To tell the stories with due impact, our blog will employ literary devices which may be found in classic works of creative nonfiction such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Rather than restrict our writing to the dry chronological third-person style traditional in newspaper stories, we shall write with greater freedom. For example, the piece to follow in this blog employs the classic literary form of a journey, and subsequent issues will provide further chapters of the journey, some preceding in time and others following the events described in this issue.

In organizing our work, we shall bear in mind advice given to patients to encourage them to engage in regular exercise, “find some activity you enjoy to succeed in successfully making it a habit.” We hope to be engaging in an experience that will be fun not only for our readers but also for our staff. Like The New Yorker, we shall include elements of humor. Can you find that element embedded in the opening paragraph of this issue? Blessed with an advisory staff that includes not only academics but also outstanding musicians and thespians, we shall include some coverage of underreported performances occurring in our home region, New England. We thank every reader who has managed to traverse our lengthy prologue and hope you will find that the story we now begin will reward your patience.