Samuel Johnson, that 18th century English writer better known today by his reputation rather than by his works, published The Rambler, a twice-weekly periodical, from 1750 to 1752. I think of The Rambler as a sort of 18th century blog: Johnson took on subjects that others had already written about, expressed firm opinions that had been heard before, and often wrote about matters that no one would care about a year later.

In the issue from 6 August 1751 (no. 145), Johnson apologized for those writers who write for ephemeral periodicals. “These papers of the day, the Ephemera of learning, have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life, than more pompous and durable volumes,” said Johnson. We have little need to know what happened in ancient kingdoms, about which we expect little or nothing; we have a real need to know about events that shape our lives today. “If it be pleasing to hear of the preferment and dismission of statesmen, the birth of heirs, and the marriage of beauties,” he says, “the humble author of journals and gazettes must be considered as a liberal dispenser of beneficial knowledge.” And so we should not despise such petty writers, even though what they write will be forgotten tomorrow.

Today’s petty writers can be found on the Internet. You can read blogs about cats who are trying to lose weight. You can read innumerable blogs about babies, reporting when baby gets its first tooth, when baby takes its first step, when baby vomits for the first time. You can read a seemingly infinite number of political blogs which tend to report on what other political blogs have said, often using vituperative language and relying on ad hominem attacks as their primary rhetorical strategy. I can enjoy reading blogs about overweight cats. I don’t mind reading blogs about babies that I know. I won’t read political blogs myself, but I can understand why people are fascinated by them. I’d be willing to call blogs generous dispensers of mildly beneficial knowledge, if I can qualify that by adding that they can be too generous in their dispensing. And if I think of Twitter, Facebook, and other popular social media as micro-blogging, then these newer social media are even more generous in dispensing their ephemeral writings. In the last half minute, dozens of petty writers have been posting such ephemera statements as “Sad story at fort hood. God save the world.” and “grey’s anatomy, you make me cry everytime. and i dont cry over television shows!” to Twitter.

What would Samuel Johnson make of blogs and Twitter? Would he have despised the petty writer who just wrote “i’m saying doe, if Britney can have 100million$ music career basically doing what kim just did. why cant kim?? lol” in a tweet to Twitter? Or would Johnson have found some fleeting value even in that? If I’m honest with myself I often find such ephemera to be more vigorously written and more entertaining (in the short run, at least) than Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel. And I don’t even know who “kim” is.