I am new to the blogosphere, just a few weeks old in fact, and I’d been wondering, even before I posted my first entry, why it was I was doing this.

Who would want to read my thoughts and musings? Who was I to assume that I had a right to send my grumblings and vague non-thoughts out into the world?

It all felt a little vain if the truth be told.

It was also rather disconcerting to notice just how little I had to say for myself in the end.

I would sit down to post of an evening and realise that there was nothing I could think of to write. So I’d pull the plug and go do something else instead.

Something more passive that didn’t require too much thought or effort on my part. Something which could distract me from the hideous thought that perhaps I really am a very dull person after all, with very little to say for myself.

Then I read about Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad both currently in jail in Iran for publishing their thoughts in their respective blogs and I realised that even with nothing to say, I at least have the freedom to decide whether to blog or not to blog.

These men are incarcerated for their beliefs and opinions and have now been deprived of their right to speak their minds.

A right I take for granted. I right I don’t even realise I have, so deeply held and naive is my assumption that freedom of speech is guaranteed.

It means the rest of us (reluctant blogger or not) must join together and be a voice for them.

Cyberspace is becoming increasingly important as a place of protest. It is our global civic space, our new town square in an age where public space is disappearing fast.

We may no longer be able to take to the streets but we can take to the ether.

If that isn’t a reason to stay online then I don’t know what is.