Every man and his blog

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"As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs."

That's from Wikipedia's entry on blogs. So I guess Booksmart is somewhere above the 112, 000,001st web log. It seems every man and his dog has a blog. I'm late for this party.

But what do people do with these things anyway? A web log is such a strange beast. It seems to exist simply because it can; we blog because it's there. But what is "it"?

The word "blog" is a portmanteau of "web" and "log". The "web" is... well, this here URL, and the ones I link to, and the ones they link to, and any other downloadable images, documents etc, that are weaved together by hypertext, and accessible through the internet. It's a phenomenon that distinguishes the 90s and 2000s from the backward decades of the early, middle, and all-but-latest 20th century.

A "log" (as the word relates here) is derived from a diary used for nautical purposes, relating information about a journey, much of it fairly quotidian.

The resulting neologism, "blog", is basically a word for a world wide web based diary; an individual's commentary or journal of some sort, recorded as a series of distinct entries on the net, and displayed in (reverse) chronological order.

But wait, the web is accessible to anyone in the world, as long as they have the necessary internet access. Yet a diary is traditionally seen as something that you are meant to keep private. Isn't it kinda bizarre that what was once kept under your bed to hide it from your sister is now meant to be shown to the entire planet?

Not that anyone is likely to read such a web log as this one anymore, at least without a specific reason. This ain't cutting edge any longer; we aren't Brad Fitzpatrick. As I noted, there's over 100 million other blogs out there, why are you here?*
Why am I? Before I get too existential, the point is: why does anyone think to add to the plethora of blogs in cyberspace? Well, "because I can" seems to be my thinking. I like to rant about things sometimes. Other times, I like to wax philosophical. I'm generally happy to discuss my thoughts with anyone, so why not make my diary public?

So that's what you'll see here, for the most part: a rant about this, a waffle about that. A gripe about some current affairs issue, or a delineation of my thoughts on some random philosophical matter. As much as I can, I'll try and wed the two.

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* But thanks for reading.