It seems like a simple enough question to answer. But like any question, exploration of the first topics which come to mind will (if we hold on to our curiosity) reveal yet more questions. Let us first explore how we explore, then apply this process to answering the question “What are blogs for?”

We are presented with a Question. When our mind does not at once present us with a prepackaged Answer (and if it interests us) we explore. As we branch further out from our initial point of inquiry, typically the mind will find relations between different threads and clump them into categories. By branching out more, then returning to our original question, then branching again: general areas become mapped.

As we grow in our understanding of a particular area of thought, we become a bit more oriented, and can more easily find our way between future threads. Further, as our internal cartography becomes more robust, we can navigate from areas of related topics up to a birds eye view: where we can peer down at the overarching umbrella which thematically groups related topics as a set.

Our modes of thinking, conscious or not, gain much utility and efficiency by following this course:

1. We compare local topics,
2. then jump up to the umbrella topic level,
3. compare other umbrella topics with our starting point,
4. then explore
5. and ultimately locate a lower topic under a different umbrella than the origin.

This results in connecting a beginning and ending point which otherwise we wouldn’t have thought to compare or cross-examine. Or (in other words) we find a way to bring two found thought-objects into the same room-of-thought, stand back, and observe them side-by-side.

By assembling these umbrellas, traversing up into them, then back down into another area, thematically related threads become linked, and our internal maps (and functional roads between them) become faster and more robust. And besides utility: it’s fun. As a concrete example, the topic of this introduction itself would be a fun thread to explore in a future essay.

We think, we explore, we find, we compare. This abstract portrait (of knowledge seeking and refining) is necessarily present in the brain of anyone who writes a cooking blog, an art blog, a technical blog, a personal journaling blog, or any kind of blog. So as a beginning, we can start with this:

Q: What are “blogs” for?
A: To explore.

And as creatures with brains which compulsively seek to understand and to be understood, we can assert the (perhaps) most immediate and low-hanging-fruit of possible answers to this question.

Q: What are “blogs” for?
A: To explore and share what we find.

This seems like a nice, concise answer. But it lacks flavor. It doesn’t really capture the feeling of the many-possible-stews with many-possible-ingredients of forces which motivate one to create a blog in the first place, nor the equally rich variety of experiences of different audiences with (potentially) different mind-states: each perusing different, uniquely-homespun aggregations of “shared explorations”.

I’d like to assert that this isn’t a pointlessly concise answer, though in a vacuum its utility is arguably small (but what isolated tidbit in a vacuum isn’t?). The real use of this answer (and all similarly over-generalized answers) resides in where it guides us, not in what it explains by itself.

Let’s discard for a moment all the reasons that might possibly lead someone to write a blog concerning:

• economic and social motivations
• personality inclinations
• and potential external rewards in general.

Just for now. These are especially important angles to explore, but by ignoring them for a bit, we can better form and mold the thought-clay of our conception of what blogs are in essence. First let’s look at blogs via the lens of recorded information.

Possibility trees. Attributes. Let’s start.

Typically when we talk about blogs, we’re referring to a kind of website which has posts (or pages in general) and the author adds more periodically. If a blog had only a single page which never changed, I don’t think we’d call that a “blog”, we’d just say “that one website”. But not all websites with multiple pages are “blogs”. You wouldn’t call a series of search results on Google a blog, nor would you refer to the shopping pages on Amazon a blog. Blogs tend to refer to something more homey, more personal, or perhaps intentionally episodic in nature.

So what types of multi-page websites do feel like blogs? Let’s see. A blog could be like a journal. A blog could also be a series of notes or tutorials on a specific topic (with a little sidebar of similar entries or other related posts by the author). A blog could even just be random things which the author periodically appends new entries to. The one thing that seems to tie blogs together as a concept is that they have entries. But what types of content can exist in these entries to qualify as a blog? What data, and for what purpose?

In terms of content, a blog can either be an active exploration on paper (“exploration on screen” doesn’t quite have the right connotation) or a delineation of useful tidbits that resulted from past explorations of the author or group.^{[[footnote 1]]} These explorations could lean towards more-informative or more-personal, but there’s no fixed rule, and both seem to be very common. A blog can be a static historical progression, or it can be an evolving series of informative posts which are refined as better solutions occur to the author. In the latter example, perhaps the author appends or rewrites information (especially in the case of software tutorial blogs) as the times and technologies change, to keep the blog current and up-to-date. Or maybe the author of a cooking blog discovers a glorious tweak to a recipe, and updates the original post with the delicious revision.

So blogs always have content. Either the author is exploring information in the blog itself (much like this post) or the author has already discovered something and is posting it (much like cooking blog recipes). Having said this, let’s look again at a counter-example. Wikipedia is a series of pages with recorded facts and information. I don’t think we’d call Wikipedia a blog website, though it has a series of entries. So blogs are somehow different from a catalog of information, and different from encyclopedias in general. This leads us back to the whole “blogs are more homespun/ personal/ like journal entries” type of definition.

You might be thinking, “Cool, so blogs are blogs. Information served and organized as entries, with a personal and episodic spin.” And I think that’s a nice and concise way to think of blogs. However, something occurred to me while writing this, and I’d like to throw this monkey-wrench into our definition-machine:

If blogs are just episodic or personal tidbits, how are blogs different from letters?

You might already see where I’m going with this. Imagine two people sending letters back and forth. Now look at a single letter, and look at a single page from any blog. Both the page and the blog entry are “pages” of information, personal data assembled as a stream of text (let’s assume they’re both just text for simplicity). In this way, blogs can be seen as the digital bloom of flowers rising out of our species’ history of writing correspondence. And this notion is beautiful in all kinds of ways:

1. A) Blogs connect our modern lives to the traditions and inclinations of those who came before us.
   
   
2. B) Blogs embody in modern times: the idealized vision of someone writing a letter by candlelight (only now it’s LCD’s and LED’s).
   
   
3. C) Blogs are a testament: as humans, we love writing so much that we brought the possibility into our machines, breathing the romantic spark of creation and creative correspondence into the otherwise cold heart of our machines. Etc. :)
   

Although I’m being a bit playful here, I really do think there’s a beautiful and important connection between blogs and letter writing. Only before, we’d write correspondence to a particular individual, household, or organization. And now, we write blog entries sometimes totally unaware of who our readers might be. In a way, I think this is a lens which can help us discern whether a website is a blog or not. You ask: “Is this website a series of letters from the author to the reader over time?” To which one might rebut: “Then is an email chain a blog?”

Which leads me to the answer I think I’ll leave it at for now.

To summarize, if I stretch myself to be as forthcomingly honest as I can, partially I’m posting this to a small tucked-away corner of the internet to satisfy a freshly-reawoken-itch-due-to-the-pandemic: the fancy of creating a small work to last a small amount of time, yet nevertheless to last longer than my mortal coil. Maybe that’s a bit too somber, but I think it’s beautiful. The whole passing-the-torch combined with standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants type of thing. I’ve always loved those notions. It both humbles and astonishes to look at the big picture, this long play of Humanity which we get to shape and contribute to for some-number-of years. To boil-it-all-down to a concentrated notion: throwing essays into this blog is a fun way to go about doing what I always do in a slightly new way. And this brings me joy.

To summarize the overarching umbrella theme of all writings I create, I suppose you could say my personal trope is this: “To explore and share the methodologies by which we explore and share.” I am fascinated by meta-self-reference and full-circles, and this conclusion satisfies both checkboxes nicely for me.

Hopefully you find some joy and utility here, dear Reader. And if not, hopefully you can find the antithesis of some fragment or style above and find inspiration from a derived counter-example. Have as excellent of a day as you are able, however high that may be today. Strive for the better: don’t stop running from fine and racing towards your personal best. And remember to cherish small moments. There are many beautiful things in this Universe, whoever and whenever you are. Warm wishes.