HERE’S A RATHER GOOD POST on what blogging is all about:

So it’s not the technology, it’s the people, and “what we’re doing when we blog” is the same thing we do at cocktail parties, except that with blogs we provide evidence. . . .

Bloggers have made the media more honest, and we’ve made it more relevant to people’s lives. We applied technology to a real human need, and we’d best be paying more attention, as technologists, to how the technology is being used, and as citizens to what we’re able to learn through this medium about the world we live in. The medium itself is not the message, never was, and never will be.

I agree — with the minor quibble that the ability to provide links really does make a difference in the quality and speed of discussion. It’s like a cocktail party with Nexis.