It’s sad that blogs are in decline, as they are the only truly interesting new cultural phenomenon to emerge from the internet. Twitter and similar services are useful, sometimes entertaining, but Twitter entire and anything like it could be thrown into the sun and nothing of value would be lost.

The same could be said for Facebook, MySpace and other social networks. I am not denying they are important to the people using them, but will they contribute anything truly new and valuable to the culture and the (hopefully) ongoing Enlightenment?

Doubt it; hasn’t happened yet and probably never will.

Blogs, though, are a place where you can interact and learn from the smartest people on the world on any topic, to glean insights that were impossible to get in any way before, by anyone.

Where else could you read in real time about Fukushima from a real nuclear scientist, in depth and detail? How in the past could you have learned about breakthroughs in science by the very researchers discovering them?

Not to mention how blogs reinvigorated and re-energized feminism.

And it was on a blog that I met the woman that I consider my closest friend, though she is far away (hello in Vancouver!).

Some of the best writing I’ve read in the past decade has not been in books or even in magazines, but in blogs.

And that’s all going away, slowly but inevitably.

I’m not sure why, really. Certainly blogs are disliked by our de facto rulers – corporations and their associated viziers – but there has been no direct censorship in the West for the most part.

Perhaps it’s that the smart (and in many cases affluent) people found the internet first, but are now being drowned out by the rabble.

Either way, I’ll miss blogging when it’s only something old women and men do, as Twitter II takes the fore and messages are restricted to emoji only.

Not a world I’ll care for at all, and much will be lost.