Five Million Blogs

Mom always said I was "one in a million," but it seems I am more like one of five million. Technocrati says there are 5,043,995 blogs. Glenn and I are surprised.

Rather than navel-gazing at my lack of significance, let's look at people searching online for people (including, but in no way restricted to, Internet dating). AMERICAN DIGEST notes:

If all online was a only collection of data bases, data dumps, bots, and a hoary assemblage of mediators/librarians/whatever ... then we'd see a lot less emotion, time, and thought expended on it. Many people read and are moved by various online interactions. Few people are moved by encyclopedias and databases although all would agree they are useful. Even if online were all of the world's records stored on an infinite hard drives and accessible to all at any moment, it would still be nothing more than a card catalogue as high as the sky. We'd use it but it wouldn't seem any more compelling than the reference section.

Quite the contrary, online is a state that evolves from the wish not to be solitary. It arises from the desire to be "connected" on a new level to others -- to their knowledge, their businesses, their tastes as they choose to reveal them, to their personalities as they choose to construct them. The gravitational attraction of online for people is other people.

WiFi cybercafes, as a group, are emblematic of this state. Where a cafe's business plan once stopped at beverages, sandwiches and pastry, one that does not offer WiFi today is a cafe heading for oblivion. Those that offer free WiFi are the one's heading for success. Touted by the cafe conglomerate Starbucks as "the third place" in American life, the addition of WiFi to this place weaves all those places into a single space that is both of and beyond the physical location in which an espresso and a laptop rests on a table.

As I said. I once had hopes of a big influential blog (I always grab for the gold ring) but I enjoy posting something and thinking "This'll make Silence mad!" You folks all rock!

Posted by jk at December 13, 2004 09:09 AM