Jorn Barger is considered by many to be the first blogger. He began looking for and then posting links to items on the Internet that interested him in 1997 on his website, Robot Wisdom. The year 1997 is considered by most industry observers to be the year in which blogs began. Blogs, an abbreviation of the original term 'weblogs,' have become vehicles for the expression of ever stronger and more opinionated prose writing online. Blogs have gone 'mainstream,' since 1997, when blogging was often thought to be something done by Nerds Without A Life, or NWALs. Some blogs have become profitable businesses, and many celebrities in a number of fields have taken to blogging themselves. Political and activist blogs have become particularly numerous. Harold Evans, the editor at large for The Week, remembers that he did not like the idea of blogging at first because he had been trained in 'print culture,' where checking and sourcing all facts was required. He worried about how easily misinformation could be disseminated by blogs. Still, he finds the opportunity for bloggers to check up on the mainstream media, to 'keep it honest,' is useful as well. Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, understands how the so-called blogosphere is subject to the same risks of the Internet itself, but he believes that blogs make a great contribution to the finance industry, which runs on information.