The reason why I have a blog is to provide information.
The Wash Post had an interesting point about the history of published information, and the point of the column is to talk about how our informational commons is for the most part built atop a latticework of advertising platforms.
In that way, it’s possible that no single industry — not newspapers nor search engines nor anything else — has done as much to advance the storehouse of accessible human knowledge in the 20th century as advertisers. They didn’t do it because they are philanthropists, and they didn’t do it because they love information. But they did it nevertheless.
An interesting point of view, and a good way to kick off the year considering that a single advertiser underwrites the hosting fee, and therefore all off the costs considering my labor is free, for this blog. You’d never suspect that one of the tiny text links on the left is a paid ad, would you?