Why Blog?

Originally uploaded by sevensixfive

It’s often hard to explain to someone who doesn’t blog, or read blogs, or use RSS feeds, why blogging is useful, or why it is so addictive. One of the first blogs I was introduced to was that of Andrew Sullivan, senior editor at The Atlantic. He’s a proliferate blogger, a master of the art, and in the latest Atlantic, he writes a post on why he does it.

What struck me was his link between the modern-day blogs and the old ship’s logs of yore, which links nicely to my last post on the extreme bloggers on the Volvo Ocean Race.

As you read a log, you have the curious sense of moving backward in time as you move forward in pages—the opposite of a book. As you piece together a narrative that was never intended as one, it seems—and is—more truthful. Logs, in this sense, were a form of human self-correction.

Sullivan goes WAY back with his blogging history, to Montaigne, Pascal and the likes. Worth a read.