"All media are extensions of some human faculty -- psychic or physical."
-- Marshall McLuhan, Counter Blast

"For some Netizens, the Web has become an extension of their 'soul.'"

The online diary's leading practitioners are Justin Hall and Carolyn Burke. Perhaps you've heard of these two. Burke was recently on the cover of U.S. News and World Report. New media poster boy Justin Hall currently sets up shop at Howard Rheingold's Electric Minds. Thousands of people visit their homepages every day. Once there, you can peruse their latest dreams, get the latest on their significant others, find out what they had for lunch that day, and learn countless other minutiae by clicking on the collected hyperlinks. They are followed by a countless host of imitators. The Semi-Existence of Bryon comes to mind, as well as girl named Jennifer. The number of confessors grows daily. Just try to find a homepage without poetry or "daily musings." There are enough diarists and sensitive artists on the Web to fill all the Starbucks in the world. What's going on here? Why is the Web such a popular confessional medium?

To answer these questions, it's important to remember the fundamental seduction of the Web: With a few simple tools anyone can publish a page with (potentially) a world-wide audience. So, in that sense, online diaries are no surprise; give thousands of people a platform on which to speak, and they will discuss the topic most dear to their hearts: themselves. Homepages quickly became a way of carving one's own niche in cyberspace, of decorating one's locker door for all the world to see.

When Justin Hall began posting his journal on the Web, two qualities made it stand out: the eerie, machine-like consistency of his daily updates and the intimacy of his revelations. Visiting Justin's site is like following a person on a continual dare. "Surely, he won't tell me about that?" you wonder, and then you click, and he does. Over time, I've read the details of the first time he had sex with his girlfriend, how he coped with his father's suicide, and numerous other revelations. If you are at all nosy, you just can't stop clicking. At one point, he literally bares it all. For whatever reason, Justin feels comfortable revealing himself to an anonymous Internet audience, not to mention his friends and acquaintances. This brand of introspection mixed with exhibitionism is something new and curious.

"Homepages have become a way of decorating one's locker door for all the world to see."

Sure, people have published diaries and tell-all books, but not continually updated, ever-expanding ones. The near real-time verisimilitude of Web diaries attracts the voyeur in all of us. The potential audience tempts the writer. If you have ever kept a journal or diary, you know that on some level, the hope exists that your writing will be discovered by others someday. Publishing on the Web tips the scales in favor of discovery. It's like throwing a party for yourself. The creator of an online diary rests safe in the feeling that now they are no longer alone with their thoughts. They may also entertain the hope that maybe, just maybe, someone out on the Web might be a kindred soul. (Or maybe an agent is listening; Carolyn Burke was recently signed up by one.) Although they usually don't admit it, celebrity is often the ultimate goal of the serious online diarist.

But projects like Justin's have moved beyond mere diary-keeping and a desire for fame and attention. Although I've never met him, by reading Justin's page, I could call him up today and discuss his latest romance, the party he attended last night, and what has been on his mind as if I were an old friend. Justin exists in two places: on his URL and IRL (in real life). With his daily uploads of journal writing, he fulfills the science fiction dream of downloading human memory onto disk. Because he is interesting, he has achieved a certain amount of celebrity. Beyond that, though, through his ever-growing Web site, Justin achieves a measure of immortality. (Maybe when Justin grows tired of updating his virtual self, he can hand off the site to someone else, who might seamlessly begin where Justin left off. It worked with the Nancy comic strip.)

"People might pass by if you are thumbing for a ride, but they will happily e-mail you if your homepage moved them."

Let's face it, obsessively detailing all your emotions for an audience is weird. But think of the sudden relevance given to all of your actions, all of your thoughts, all of your friends, when they will be uploaded daily to your Web site. It's like being on the "Real World," only you are in charge of production. And the nature of our interconnected computers lends itself well to this kind of voyeurism. Web surfing is rarely a shared experience. It usually occurs late at night, just you and the machine, pulling down files from networks spanning the globe. By dialing into one another's homepages, reading one another's thoughts, we engage in a new 20th century form of empathy. People might pass by insolently if you are thumbing for a ride, but they will happily send you an e-mail telling you how much the writing on your homepage moved them.

By placing a screen between ourselves and the outside world, the homepage becomes a space where we take the dare of exposing ourselves. What will we do with this new art form? How will we keep our voices authentic? That remains to be seen. But by imploding their personalities on the Web, Justin and Carolyn have created unique cultural artifacts out of their lives. And that's really what is happening with homepages on the Web: the production of a curious, organic folk culture. In the end, your homepage is not really about you, it's about all of us, screaming to be heard.