This exercise – the one of posting my thoughts into the ether for all to see – is an interesting one. It’s remarkable to consider how far this pursuit has come in such a short time.
The opportunity of people to have their thoughts so widely available is one of quite recent development. The ubiquity of the modern Internet is quite staggering. Consider the people in your own life and the numbers of them that have access to this medium. Think about how readily available they are to you now, through blogging and email correspondence.
It was not long ago at all that such methods of contact with other people were unavailable. Certainly, email has existed since the 1970s and probably earlier, but the ability to contact distant friends and family nearly instantly is paradigm-shifting.
I’m not quite sure what the preceding generation’s equivalent to blogging would be. Perhaps it doesn’t really have an equivalent. The diary and the journal are analogous to some degree but are generally intended to be private, and the blog is meant to be public.
Or is it? Blogs are read by such disparate people, and mostly by strangers. The vast majority of people who read these posts will have no idea who I am, and likely won’t care. :) Still, I think that most who blog actively seek readers. I know that I care if others read these words.
Conversely, my journal is private. There are certain people that I would allow to read it, but very few. I don’t write those words for public consumption – I write them for catharsis, for reflection, for contemplation and for triggering my memory later in my life. I care far less about being engaging than I do when I write here.
These are interesting times… my words are only 300 ms from Australia on the Internet, but it takes 26 hours in jets to get there from here. The world is small and big both.