`You could draw some serious flak from the blogging community if the article comes off as lurid", thunders the email from Simon, a Dublin-based "user-experience architect" (he designs corporate websites).
"You could have a lot of people reading on the Net. If they don't like what they see, you'll know all about it."
Why the attitude? Because it has been suggested that Simon's "weblog" - a regularly updated site chronicling his forays into the boundless ether of cyberspace - is essentially a virtual confessional. A corpuscle of human vulnerability free-floating in the Web's silicon veins.
Simon isn't alone out there. Thousands of e-junkies daily post reams of Net-culled trivia strewn with deeply personal musings. These inexplicably beguiling hodgepodges of online travel guide and low calorie memoir, are weblogs, styled "blogs" in Internet verbiage. Few non-hardcore technophiles have encountered the phenomenon. Give it a few years. Blogging may soon be as ubiquitous as dotcom bankruptcies.
Blogs can be defined as glorified jotting pads. Bloggers take note of useful or unusual websites and append brief critiques. But blogging, like the Net itself, has undergone a viral transformation - mutating into a stream of consciousness oeuvre straddling a hitherto unrealised boundary between art and technology. On-line diary is as adequate a description as any, though elitists such as Simon may disagree. Whatever - who could have imagined Net heads would turn out to be such a fascinating bunch?
Capricious and wayward, blogs stand as antithesis to the soulless efficacy of monolithic search engines such as Yahoo and Altavista. In its purest form, blogging brushes shoulders with true art.
Consider Robot Wisdom, the original of the species. Herein, author Jorn Barger dissects popular culture with a brutal, breathtaking minimalism that elevates the site beyond a mere trawl of handy Web links. Barger's Big Idea, a sprawling, hyperlinked annotation of Joyce's Ulysses, has been proclaimed a watershed in Web culture, the birthplace of a new literature rooted in the medium's multi-layered essence. This is almost - almost - just like they used to say the Net would be. Free, democratic, unsullied by corporate covetousness.
"When I started weblogging seriously, I was writing about every little thing," says Dublin programmer, Tom Cosgrave. "I was in a job at that time that was not turning out as I had been told it would and I was writing about the boss and all the various aspects of the job.
"Eventually he stumbled across it, and while I was careful not to reveal any names and places, he wasn't too impressed. I think the reason I was writing all the negative stuff is because I was using the blog as a way to let off steam and get the negative feelings out of my system. I found it therapeutic."
About Helena, by Trinity College student Helena Keleher, embodies blogging at its most unabashedly (sorry Simon) lurid. Keleher rants at her parents' social life. Polemicizes against Ireland's education system. Cracks gags about period pains. This is Bridget Jones chucking the lawyer gig, holing up in a squat, gorging on acid and cookies.
"I don't care whether people read my blog or not. It's for me. It's my little part of the Web, where I can do whatever I want," says Keleher. "There's a certain amount of ego involved, sure. But there's also a sense of letting it all out, of being able to do what you want."
It's tempting to hail blogging as a riposte to the drive that's transforming the Net into a global shopping mall. Or as a grass roots expression of people power: Joe/Josephine Average doing his/her own thing and generating bigger waves than high concept, feverishly hyped commercial sites.
Unfortunately, the internationalist theory won't wash. Not everybody can blog. A firm grasp of the fundamentals - specifically URL programming language - is a prerequisite.
"Blogging is a consequence rather than a reaction to the growth of corporate presences on the Internet," says Keleher. "Those of us who spend a lot of time on the Web occasionally crave a little bit of humanity. We're ring fencing off a little part of the Web and setting up camp."
Useful blogs: www.robotwisdom.com - www.mersault.com - www.netsoc.tcd/