I was reading Steven Jones Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety that I came across similar deliberation on the 'estrangement' aspect of the Internet involving 'reading' as a refuge activity, a lonely activity. My contention about weblogging as a lonely activity can be put in this same light. Jones wrote that "Hogart's 'old men' did not become estranged from those around them because of the reading-room, or because of reading. They visit the reading-room because it is their refuge, a place to be among others of the same lot. It is in a word, their consolation. But it is a place to be among and not with, in terms of interaction." (p.14) Subsitute if you can reading with weblogging or weblog or blogging. It means the same, and it serves all the while my contention about the whole issue of loneliness and refuge in the activities of webloggers online in the east and the west.