Why?

I've contributed to a few blogs but never considered starting my own until now. The biggest obstacle has been the fact that the net is bursting with blogs that virtually no-one reads and why should I add to the pile? I belong to a generation that feels that you have to work hard to get published and if you can publish absolutely anything without even a bit of a struggle then what's the point? The point of this and probably the majority of blogs is not to become famous but simply to write down ideas and impressions and be able to access them anywhere. If you have a few friends or colleagues who want to contribute then that's a bonus.

I'm interested in seeing what happens when I start this blog and how it develops. I don't have a clear idea of what I want to do with this but I like the idea of just casting off and letting the wind blow me along. Will anyone stumble upon this and comment? How do you get noticed in the world of blogging? Will I turn up on other blogs? If I continue writing like this, probably not.

Has anyone done any research into dead web sites, defunct blogs etc? There must be millions of sites where nothing has happened for years but they still use up space on someone's server with digital tumbleweed blowing across the home page. Google sometimes offers one as a possible answer to a search but when you get there and it says "Last updated 20 July 2002" you get a sinking feeling. How many petabytes of space could be saved by dumping all that digital trash? Or should it be saved for posterity and if so who decides? If you want some web-based nostalgia take a look at the Internet Archive which has a vast archive of old web sites but I'm not sure how much of the blogosphere they preserve.

I promise to press the self-destruct button on this one before the tumbleweed hits town.