One of the purposes of the Japanese 'meishi' or calling card is to instantly know your:
a) opponent's
b) colleague's,
c) perspective date's
d) customers'
e) and anyone else who falls through the cracks
BACKGROUND.
The reason this is important is so you can adjust the 'register meter', a linguistic knob located in the left frontal lobe that adds verbal candy to speech such as 'isn't that interesting' or ' you don't say' to elevate the perceived status of the speaker.
So the meishi gets out there fast, real fast, somewhat like a gun in a cowboy western....KABANG...here's my meishi and this is WHO I AM and THIS IS WHAT I DO and this is the kindergarden I graduated from!
Now a weblog is usually scanned quickly, almost as quickly as a magazine on a rack: your either 'in' or 'out'; there's not a lot of wavering.
But the blog goes a bit further than the meishi in that it provides the following information, albeit indirectly:
1) What you are reading (i.e. RSS feeds)?
2) What are your ideas on what you are reading (i.e. comments on RSS feeds)?
3) What are your current interests (i.e the things that keep you up at night)
4) What are your opinions on ANYTHING (this gets slightly dangerous!)
5) Where do you go to read other peoples' ideas on ANYTHING (i.e. navigator links)
So reading a weblog, can get someone up to date instantly on what's going on in your head!
A case in point: an old friend recently got in touch after twenty years and politely asked:
" Gee... whatccha been up to?"
" Ah....lets see....go here: www.xyxyxyx.weblog...that'll tell what I've been up to!"
So the weblog is, in fact, the ideal digital meishi: it lets people know your current intellectual '10-4', with perhaps more information than needed! But unlike real human contact, you can easily flip the channel button on a weblog and tune into another person if it gets boring!
And perhaps that's the real attraction of weblogs after all: the channel changer!
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