Who am I talking to, anyway?
People do, occasionally, fall upon interesting personal web sites. Usually (or at least with me) it's a case of running a Google search on a topic that interests me, and in that way finding an article that someone has written. If I find the article interesting, or well-written, or provacative, or whatever, I'll click up in the site hierarchy until I get to a main page that gives me some information about the person who wrote the article. Sometimes I find the basic name, rank and serial number stuff, but occasionally I hit on a captivating site that I'll bookmark simply because I feel that I've come to know someone through it.
But though I'm in favor of serendipitous surfing, almost by definition it's not the sort of thing you can plan for. Does that mean that I'm not writing for some amorphous ur-surfer who just might fall across my site? No, it doesn't. My guess is that anyone who posts a site pictures some form of ur-surfer and then directs his or her writing toward that idealized image.
But I'm a bit more down to earth as well. I can picture two rather well defined possible readerships: People who know me personally (including people who might want to use some of the materials on my site) and people who might want to know me. Of course for the "might want"s the business card model on the whole fits the bill, but what about those who know me?
For better or for worse, I live in two languages (and much as it might be called for, I don't have the time for a fully bi-lingual site). That's true both in my corporeal and my virtual lives. The Boidem is in English - the result of a decision made long ago, and not one I'd like to change. As a comfortably bi-lingual person, I've discovered that my webs of association are considerably different in Hebrew and in English. Different means different, not necessary better, or richer, though it's fair to say that they flow much more readily in English. Among other reasons, that's why the Boidem has remained in English (and why it's close to impossible for me to translate it).
But if, returning to that business-card model again, my personal web site primarily reflects my professional activities, it's going to have to be in Hebrew. And of course that excludes a rather extensive potential readership - not only friends and family who might like to click on my pages in order to say "how nice ... so you have a web site as well", but also that previously referred to ur-surfer who falls upon a page of mine somewhere and just can't rest until he or she knows something about the person who wrote it.
Go to: the next big question, or,
Go to: the previous big question, or,
Go to: On regaining a cyberdentity.