@dave @davew By the way, you said "blogging", and I would say... Adobe Flash.
Remember this fucking thing? You're old enough, you must.
Yeah, it democratized multimedia on the Web, big time. It enabled a wave of creativity, the VAST majority of which was low-effort ugly at times racist crap. It was absolutely fucking revolting.
But for a LOT of people, it was either THIS means of expression, or none at all.
In the depth of all of this cruft, though, there were culture-defining diamonds forming. And after the shitstorm went away, the diamonds stayed. And a lot of creators moved on to greater things.
And that's almost any creative technology under the Sun.