What are blogs good for?

[I seem to be on a writing binge today.]

I still remember an email exchange I had with a former mentor of mine. He said that blogs were narcissistic and that most people (including him) didn't really have anything worth saying.

I was pretty mad at the time. I read blogs all the time. Is that a comment on me?

In the months since that email, I've lingered over this issue. I'll write up a few thoughts here.

• Yes, most blogs are silly and narcissistic. I still remember the blog about raising a baby and the blogger posting pictures of the amount of breast milk they went through daily (complete with graphs.) A lot of blogs are diaries (and if you post that on the web, you are by definition a narcissist.) But then again, so is the majority of TV, books, and other media. Blogs are mostly a form of entertainment.
  
• There are serious people who write blogs. I haven't read them, but I assume there are some interesting blogs about politics. Michael Nielsen writes my favorite science blog. Unfortunately, you have to either be really smart or have a lot of time to write anything meaningful.
  
• Blogs can be a useful way of obtaining hard-to-find information. If you want to get a review of an obscure or just-released gadget, blogs are an excellent resource. I've also found many interesting links to articles in blogs. Plus, it's fun to see what "smart" people are reading.
  
• Blogs can foster a sense of community. It cheers me up when I read about a fellow grad student struggling to finish her thesis. I guess it's a little sad if you're reading blogs to get a vicarious thrill, but maybe there are some people out there who are lonely and live in the middle of nowhere.

Most of my posts are of several forms: comments on other things people have written, links to things other people have written or created, explanation of an idea (my way of teaching myself), and my original thoughts (rarely). You can see a pattern here. This blog is mostly me writing to myself! It's like my personal scrapbook, so I don't publicize it. Hmm, maybe I am a little bit of a narcissist.