Weblogs, or something very similar, were dreamed up more than 100 years ago by Jules Verne. In his 1890 futuristic "A Day in the Life of an American Journalist in 2890," he predicted that instead of being printed, every morning the news is spoken directly (IM'd?) to subscribers, who, from interesting conversations with reporters, learn the news of the day. Each subscriber owns a recorder (hard disk?) to gather the news if he doesn't want to listen to it himself.

Although he was off by 890 years, Verne accurately predicted that people would want to get the news as unvarnished as possible. Weblogs are good devices for encouraging conversation, although they are still in very early development and usage. I expect to see them become more useful and more sophisticated in the next decade.
(Christopher Barr, Gründer von CNET Networks)

Nachzulesen im zweiten Teil der Serie von Mark Glaser bei der Online Journalism Review: For Pioneers of Web Journalism, the Future Is Still Full of Surprises

Den ersten Teil gibt's hier nachzulesen: Online News Pioneers See Lots of Changes in the First 10 Years.