Why do academics blog?

Recently i found this interesting link:
http://social.it.rit.edu/mediawiki/index.php?title=Why_do_academics_blog%3F
Here a collection of authors are trying to find an answer to the above question:
Why do academics blog?

This site is mostly referred to social scientists, but is very interesting also for researchers in other fields.

In the cited: http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/2002/07/30.html#a14
a discussion on pro and cons of blogging is reported.
Here what is interesting for me is that, even it is referred to social scientists and not ict people, you can find the same resistance to blogging.
I report some quotes from it:

• It takes time.
• "The technology is not well-established and tested at this point."
• Many people don't like being among the first ones doing something.
• Shyness and fear of public mistakes.
• Many scholars won't write unless they have to. They may especially be reluctant to publicly expose ideas that they haven't tested.
• Fear that someone else will pick up their ideas and work them out before they do.

Some of these issues are very similar to my discussion about the present post (see . 1/03/05 Chatting over this blog by L and F)