I have been reading the wonderfully erudite food and software blogger Mark Bernstein ever since meeting him at Blogtalk in Vienna two years ago. Today he has posted a robust defence of the archetypal 'cheese sandwich' blog post. It used to be said, in dismissing the importance of weblogs, that all bloggers do is write about the cheese sandwich they are eating or the flight they are about to board ("see you on the other side!").

Mark points out five contexts in which a cheese sandwich may have significance above and beyond its cheesy, bready physical makeup to make a point about the growing genre of food blogging:

"First, it might be an excellent cheese sandwich. I had a very fine bleu cheese the other night at AOC, a mild and creamy bleu from a small farmhouse cheese maker in Minnesota, served with a nicely fresh and crusty baguette. Food blogging has been immensely successful and influential. We're in the midst of a food writing revolution, a new way of thinking about food, and blogs and other forums are leading the way.

In a previous post about cheese sandwiches, he hypothesises that the rise in food and real-life experience blogging is "perhaps because we're paying attention. We've outgrown the sensational thrill-a-minute goldrush of the first net boom. We've outstayed the depressing gloom of the aftermath. Now, we're listening and we're tasting and we're thinking."

But is this really the case?....

Back in 2003, my aggregator was full of ideas and what I would call 'transformational thinking' - exciting stuff that had clear potential to change the way we live and work. Now, aside from conference reports and notes, some of which continue to inspire (and the now traditional annual posting by Clay), there is less new thinking around. To be fair, this is partly because more of us are focusing on implementing things - doing not thinking - and that is to be welcomed. But the majority of the current crop of Web 2.0 businesses are based on a small number of basic models or are simply gradient fill, big font AJAXY interfaces onto existing hard-to-monetise plays. The difference this time is the culmination of the classic underpant gnome business plan is no longer 'profit!" but "get bought by Yahoo or Google!" No disrespect intended to the many good, innovative Web 2.0 businesses I know are out there, but it would be refreshing to come across more original thinking in what we blog about.

Actually, I am starting to think that Technorati and Google rankings are the new cheese sandwiches. There, I've said it. I come across more and more bloggers who either write mostly about their own traffic/rankings or write posts only to improve their traffic: aka linkbait, a term that William Safire missed in his NYT roundup of blargon. I suppose if your business model is advertising driven, or if you pimp products through your blog (both of which, incidentally are staple dot.com models) then writing about traffic makes sense. But if you are an ideas-driven person like me, it gets boring very quickly.

Come back cheese sandwiches, all is forgiven!

Maybe I just need to purge my aggregator and find some new sources.