the meaning of "publishing" or "publication" is lost on this generation, and it's all the Internet's fault. the Internet is like an abstraction layer between the "physical world" and the "logical world". not that the logical world is ideal or anything, but what it does do, is remove the physical (aka real-world) boundaries from eye. at this point, in 2005/6, when Internet is at most gigabit for the everyday user, experienced users can still notice the difference between a server in USA and a server in Japan, but let's just say this is a temporary technial problem that will be gone by 2010.

my point is this - that the difference between a blog and a diary, is summed up in the world "publish". where a diary is a personal record, for one to find one's own tracks, a blog is a published statement, one's offerring to the world. but nowadays, people write about their private thoughts online as if it made no difference. maybe it really makes no difference to them - but maybe too, that it's not that they want their private lives to be examined, but that, they want a space to shout. to shout back at the world that has pushed them into little cubicles and pigeon holes. it is the peasant living in us, trying to throw stones at the palace walls of a tyrannical king.

so much for civilisation and industrialisation. every year, i come back to the same conclusion - that the world hasn't changed much since prehistory.

anyway, this entry has been sponsored by my new dairy. Proceeds from clicking-through will go to NKF.