Why blog?
Blogging is a strange phenomenon of this new information age. Like the printing press revolutionized the publishing of ideas, the internet transformed it competely. While you needed to be hired by a newspaper or signed with a publisher to reach the literate masses of the 20th century, today anyone can do so regardless of the content's quality or popularity.
Many people have kept journals or diaries in the past. Many psychologists would praise the positive aspects of doing so. Writing helps one practice expressing thoughts. Expressing ones ideas in a tangible form forces one to critique and refine those ideas, and subsequently commit to them. Would all of the people who ever kept diaries say they intended them to be private, or was it the lack of distribution in pen-paper technology which kept them private? What would Anne Frank say...would she have blogged? We don't necessarily purge our topic of the week for an audience. It's just that there is zero cost to making it public, so if some like-minded netizen out there happens to be interested in these words... the blogger has performed some minute social benefit.
There is another reason for blogging : heritage & posterity. If blogging went back 200 years, I would cherish the opportunity to look back & read about the thoughts and lives of my ancestors. It would be a great resource for both self-reflection and human history. For bloggers who may feel shy or silly about posting their words for all to see, think about all of these reasons.
Next month, it will make one year that I have been blogging. I am 34 years old, and I intend to keep the habit up as long as I have thoughts, ideas, and means to post them.
Many people have kept journals or diaries in the past. Many psychologists would praise the positive aspects of doing so. Writing helps one practice expressing thoughts. Expressing ones ideas in a tangible form forces one to critique and refine those ideas, and subsequently commit to them. Would all of the people who ever kept diaries say they intended them to be private, or was it the lack of distribution in pen-paper technology which kept them private? What would Anne Frank say...would she have blogged? We don't necessarily purge our topic of the week for an audience. It's just that there is zero cost to making it public, so if some like-minded netizen out there happens to be interested in these words... the blogger has performed some minute social benefit.
There is another reason for blogging : heritage & posterity. If blogging went back 200 years, I would cherish the opportunity to look back & read about the thoughts and lives of my ancestors. It would be a great resource for both self-reflection and human history. For bloggers who may feel shy or silly about posting their words for all to see, think about all of these reasons.
Next month, it will make one year that I have been blogging. I am 34 years old, and I intend to keep the habit up as long as I have thoughts, ideas, and means to post them.
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