Here we go

Ever have a night that changes your life? Well, tonight's probably not one of those nights for me, but for some reason, it's 5:00 AM, I have class in 4 hours, and I've been awake for the past 3 hours thinking of blogs, personal technology, and the marketplace of ideas.

What is this blog? Well, it'll hopefully serve multiple purposes, but overall, it's in the nature of an experiment. Reading my blog subscriptions recently, as well as articles in the mainstream press, there's been a continuing theme that blogs are bringing about the democratization of ideas - that they allow anyone with a good idea to be heard, and to find others to converse with. So this blog is my way of testing that proposition. Will I be able to break into conversations via online communication that I haven't participated in before?

Well, like any good experiment, we have to have a control group. After all, if my ideas go nowhere online, it could just be because I have really bad ideas, right? Fortunately, we have a great control group - my off-line life. I think I have fairly comparable writing and speaking skills, so we'll see how my on-line progress compares to "real-life" relationships that I develop.

So what conversations do I want to contribute to? Well, my passions are technology, entrepreneurship, and politics. Three things unfortunately, that seem to draw the most voices - will I be able to be heard above the madding crowd? At least if I don't succeed, my failure will be private - by definition, I guess.