Starting over: How and Why

I keep trying to ask myself what I could possibly be trying to accomplish by creating a blog. I've done this-- I've done blogging. Hell, I blogged before there existed a term for it. In 1997 I had a website, and I had friends who read it, and I relished in my false sense of popularity amongst those friends. I was an idiot then, just as I am now. At least now I have the wisdom to know I'll still be an idiot tomorrow, and the common sense to try not to be an idiot right now, even if it's inevitable.

So, for the first question: why Blogger? If I wished, I could create a new website for blogging, powered by my own coding, and designed to my exact specifications; however, I could not keep it secure. One day, my server's drive would fail at the same time as the backup systems, and my human fallibility would cause a loss of this data, completely negating my entire purpose for creating it. So here I am, on Blogger.

When I was a kid, scribing my banal kid-thoughts onto the blossoming internet, I didn't realize the utility of what I was doing, nor did I realize my true motivations. I blogged back then because I insisted in my own existence; I wanted to be the focal point of not only my life, but the lives of others. I envisioned a ridiculous shrine, as my best friend had joked, dedicated to me and my awesome technological prowess, and was likely no different from any other kid then or since who has kept an online journal. Now I'm blogging for a very different reason. I don't care if this is ever popular or if anybody reads its contents. I'm just here to say what I have to say, and be done with it.

I realized recently while watching a YouTube video called The Machine Is Us/ing Us that most of us who "use the internet" really don't understand what that means, or what it could mean if we were to actually put some effort into it. The internet, to most people, is just this big headless monster of endless information that's continually growing and providing them constant amusement for the small price of a couple thousand pop-ups a day and some ad banners. Smarter folk, or at least the tech savvy tend to use empowered web browsers which are capable of blocking all but the desired content (read: no advertisements) and so they see the web in a more "pure" form, but still are only witnessing it as bystanders. Some people interact with this internet. They post on forums or play online games; they might even create a blog or share photo albums online. But that's where the interactivity stops.

In short, for most people, the internet provides two functions: sharing information, and retrieving information. But it can do more: it can also store and enhance information. For instance, my motivations for creating this Blogger blog instead of a custom one lie in the fact that Google's systematic backups will secure this data indefinitely. But, in addition, it gives me a lot of functionality for enhancing my writing. Let's say I went on a waterskiing trip (on occasion I do) and I wrote about it (I probably will); at some point it would be very possible for me to not just describe some feat I performed, but literally embed the action within the content and show you just what I can do. That's enhancement of the very content itself, and it will remain forever pristine in its quality so long as the people I chose to host this content do not fail me.