Why do people write blogs? Exhibitionism aside, I think blogs fulfill people's need to express themselves. Trite as that may sound, I believe self-expression is a need, not a want. Self-expression is bound up with our genetically-determined capacity for language. And what is language but an evolved trait that helped our ancestors navigate their physical (and social) environments? Language was borne out of the human need to navigate. Navigation is a survival skill that we humans have utilized to our benefit for eons; thanks to language, our species came to occupy every square mile of habitable land area and to dominate this earth.

When you express an idea through your blog, you are really sending out signals to your environment in the hope that these signals will be reflected back to you, giving you an idea of what the environment looks like. Are there threats lurking out there? Any food around the corner? A blog will help you sound this out. Yes, this principle is very similar to how sonar works.

Sonar - which is an acronym for Sound Navigation and Ranging - works like this: a transponder (a device that can send and receive signals) emits sound pulses (or pings) which are transmitted through space. The pulses travel the distance until they encounter an object. This encounter causes the sound waves to be reflected back to the sending transponder, which then measures the time it took for the signals to return to it. If the speed of sound is a known quantity, one can then calculate the distance between the transponder and the object.

Interest in sonar boomed during World War 1, what with the need to detect enemy submarines. But for millions of years, animals like dolphins and bats have already been using "sonar technology" (known as echolocation) with which to navigate, hunt for prey, and fight and win their own wars for survival.

Language is just like sonar, and a blog is like an instrument - a transponder - that allows us to send pings (our thoughts) and help us find our way in cyberspace. If the pings achieve their purpose, then we should be able to map out our own sector of cyberspace with little difficulty. Hopefully, the pings will locate more fish for food than hostile submarines.  ¶ 7:00 AM