The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and the birds, as I type this, are, in fact, singing. What a world.

Thinking that silly thought, it suddenly occurs to me (I'm a bit slow, O.K.?) that this "blogosphere" thing represents a historian's dream. Back in the mid-, to late-20th century, historians suddenly got interested in the "average citizen" as a factor in history. Up till then it had been mostly the story of the big guys - kings, queens, emperors, empresses... - that history had been interested in. Then historians began combing things like commercial records, birth records, death records, marriage records, newspapers, diaries, etc., trying to get an idea of what "we" were doing while "they" were busy conquering the world.

Now, here's this enormous record of what millions of ordinary folks are doing and thinking, up-dated daily, from all over the world - what a gold mine! Which - and this is the thought that came immediately after the first, spoiling it - will disappear completely one day. It's all virtual, isn't it? There's no concrete record, examinable at any time, by anyone, unlike the case for cuneiform tablets, cave paintings, papyrus scrolls, paper documents, etc. Someday, the servers will be wiped clean, the technology will change or disappear entirely, taking all of this with it. Nuts.