Back when I was at CMP Media, in the mid-1990s, we had a corporate slogan. We were about "the builders, the sellers, and the users" of technology. (Illustration from Time Magazine.)

All CMP publications fit into one of those boxes. Computer Reseller News was for the sellers. EE Times was for the builders. Windows was for the users.

This caused a problem for those of us at Interactive Age, the new Internet book. We didn't fit neatly into any box. The ad sellers said we were a builder book, but personally I was writing for the users, and many of our stories were about the sellers.

Needless to say, the magazine was dead within months. We missed the whole Internet boom because the bosses couldn't figure out what box to put us in.

That's what publishing is all about. You divide the world into categories, to sell it, package it, and write about it. Without boxes most publishers are lost. They don't know which advertisers to target, which stories to order, or how those stories should sound when they're done.

On a blog you don't really think about that. Readers and observers do tend to put you into a box -- this is considered a "tech blog." But you and I know that I might write about anything, at any time. Sometimes I get political, often I am writing about business, there's the law, and ethics, and there's even a category here called "fun stuff." (When I find a story doesn't fit into any of those categories, I create a new one.)

This is what publishers don't get, and won't accept. So stories like Meet Joe Blog are, in the end, insult festivals. (Oh, and that's not a Van Gogh over there -- it's a Ron English, as displayed at the Rob Berman Gallery. English is an artist who defies molds and conventions. Click over and see.)

Thus, we have the conclusions of the so-called journalists, the wage-slaves of publications like Time, who can only dream of the freedom we enjoy. To wit, we're all attitude. We have no regard for the truth. We're not journalism.

We don't fit into a box. So they make a box for us. A junk box.

So here's the truth publishers won't admit to.

No one really fits into a box. The writers creating these articles don't, I don't, and neither do you.

You can choose to read anything across this wide wonderful Internet, and write what you want as well. The categories we put you in, the boxes, those are artificial constructs. All of them are, no matter whether they're made by a pollster, or a columnist, or an ad salesman. They're artificial constructs created for a specific, and limited purpose -- to sell an ad, to comprehend trends, or just to put you down.

Break out of your box. And ignore those who try to put you in one. They're just doing it because they're all trapped in boxes of their own.