A few weeks ago I was talking with some friends about Boing Boing. They had never heard of it. What is Boing Boing? It is one of the most popular blogs on the web. It is a 90’s zine, turned 00’s group blog. It is one of those places where news stories (typically strange ones) get started.

So we ended up in a whole discussion about the “zine” phenomenon, about how it was this entire underground publishing sphere and how it related to technology (cheap photocopiers and Desktop Publishing) and to the Punk culture and music of the time.

That’s the sort of thing that really does it for me. I love the cultural, political, and social layers of history. I want to know what was going on in music when Duchamp was creating his “Fountain.” What was going on in literature opposite the development of Keynesian economics? That’s the sort of stuff that I would like to think more about here.