Technically speaking computers and search engine robots and crawlers cannot read and understand the words in blogs. However, scientists have started working in this direction and planning to perform “blog-mining” for “immediate information about every aspect of our lives and see in to out very souls”.

The Economist reports that, as part of efforts to help computers understand causality rather than just raw facts, a USC team are making them read and analyze blogs — which tend to be stories about what people have done, or intend to do, or personal thoughts. Eventually, they hope to come up with a system that can “gather aggregated statistics on a day-by-day basis about the personal lives of large populations.”

Don’t be surprised! Scientists believe that useful information can really be derived from the tedium of the blogosphere.

According to the Economist, “The web could be mined to track information about emerging trends and behaviors, covering everything from drug use or racial tension to interest in films or new products. The nature of blogging means that people are quick to comment on events in their daily lives. Mining this sort of information might therefore also reveal information about exactly how ideas are spread and trends are set”. » Read more: Scientists Attempt Blog Mining