Disquisitions about public intellectuals usually conclude that they are not what they used to be. The pessimism about public intellectuals is reflected in attitudes about how the rise of the Internet in general, and blogs in particular, affects intellectual output. Critics fail to recognize how the growth of blogs and other forms of online writing has partially reversed a trend that many cultural critics have decried--what Russell Jacoby called the "professionalization and academization" of public intellectuals. In this article, the author discusses the difference between the public intellectuals born prior to 1940 and the current generation of public commentators. He opines that today's breed are more social scientists than humanists and they are more bloggers than essayists.