Tuesday, November 15, 2011

This blog's production has followed a Hubbert curve


If you look over to the 'Blog Archive' section of the right-hand sidebar, you may notice how blog activity has trailed off in recent years. The histogram of entries by year provides a good graphical depiction of the phenomenon: this blog's production has followed a Hubbert curve. Clearly, we reached a state of 'peak blog' four years ago.

At first, demand for blog-worthy posts was increasing exponentially, and I scrambled to extract thoughts from my head in order to keep pace. But eventually, the payoff from such mental excavation reached a point of diminishing returns. I was forced to find alternative methods of self-expression rather than writing crappy essays, and these substitutes that had previously been less economical became the dominant paradigm. Peak blog had come and gone, and yet the world turns on...