About Blogs

Thinking about blogs again. For all the excellent writing, we keep missing what is entirely new and unique about blogs. They are small pieces, not so loosely joined.

Blogs are American. Blogs are like quilting bees. We couldn't make this large quilt without everyone else's stiches. Each link connects another story or thought or insight. Blogs embroider voices, graphics, songs, deep thoughts into their fabric. No literary form invented before now comes close to what they do. Blogs are unique. Technology has shaped a new way to communicate. Blogs aren't about the blog you are reading, but rather about the connections between all the links, referrers, blogrolls and embedded intelligence they witness.

They have begun to flourish, not coincidentally in a time when we desperately need to connect to one another. There is no accident to this.

It's hard to imagine that novels were once new. Hard to recall that someone made up sonnets. We're watching a new literary form be born, which could never have existed until now. The Web is the mid-wife of blogs. But blogs are born of our care and consideration for others, which we have finally realized is a life or death proposition.