Well. I just wrote a scintillating commentary on the anthropology of online community, why I started my blog and the irksome absence of my umbrella. But my Blogger session timed out because I kept wandering around doing other stuff while I was at it, so I lost the lot.

Narrow escape for some. I still eagerly solicit good links to articles about online community, though. It's just interesting. Note to self: Copy update text to clipboard before hitting "post" just in case.

I'm conceptually intrigued by blogs. It has the same community/contact appeal as e-mail and chat systems and newsgroups, but with a certain shame/faux pas element removed: Posting about you and your life and whatever's intriguing your dull and insipid little mind at a particular moment to a newsgroup is tacky; sending it to everyone you know by e-mail is rude, since you're forcing your prattle into their inbox, and chatrooms work like conversations, and monologuing at length will annoy people no end, and rightly so.

At last, a forum for our egos. And the curious thing is that these things do become interesting to your friends, loved ones, and (often) total strangers. Because a lot of people do have something to say, and blogs (and the internet generally) give everyone online the chance to put it out there.

Sure, the Internet also gives us the chance to see how annoyingly banal and shallow a lot of people are. But hey, I'll take what I can get.