While reading through some blogs of folks from a message board I frequent I realized that there are many more people I encounter these days who blog not to make an impact on the world, but rather, to record their thoughts. I find myself with my feet in one stream as much as the other. I think we must have record of our thoughts, mainly for posterity's sake. A while back I mentioned that specifically as being one of the reasons for my blogging. Yet, I find that I long for community at the same time. Blogging fashioned a bridge to allow me, and I think many others, with the opportunity to leave a trail of bread crumbs along the paths of our mindscapes and life's journey. At the same time, a need for community, a need to share this journey consistently presses into my heart and mind. Sometimes the notion that a given thought is pretty unique or possibly even original... Or the hope that what I'm experiencing may help someone in their growth and development... Perhaps the possibility that what I write will spur someone else to a new insight or revelation...

This type of hope is something that moves people to write, and for as long as most writers have put ideas in public form, the most practical solution. With the advent of the information explosion and public technology, the boundaries of distributing information have shifted. Now, people can express their ideas more easily and readily than ever before. Yet ,this has created a new dynamic: the problem of informational quality. Before, publishing was an educated person's privilege. As technology for publishing personal writing proliferated the percentage of educated writer's content dropped signficantly in the entire body of published writings. Now, readers have to think and be more crtical of what they allow their minds to consume more than ever. Anyone can open up a word processor and spout things, save the document and be done. Though publishing to the web had some restrictions just a decade ago, that baracade has been dropped with the advent of blogging and public systems whose aim is widespread, ease of access for basically anyone with internet connection.

So, there is a bit of a dichotomy now. With so many people sharing their lives, there is a newfound wealth of personal experiences from which to learn and study human lives...to explore human narratives...and to see how folks you might never meet in the ordinary course of events live. So, even though we are isolated more and more by life schedules and the unspoken walls erected by classism and the dictatorial nature of today's fear-based society of avoidance, we have this virtual insight into the lives behind the walls. We have to wonder how true and accurate these dialogues are. Most blogs are unread and most questionable thoughts, beliefs or experiences probably never get questioned because their isn't enough dialectic since dialectic requires others with which to dialogue. Their is a mixed blessing in this blog-manic society. More information than ever before with less critical review means the degree of potential error and danger is higher than ever before. So, as many wise folks have noted of the blogging revolution, take everything with a block of salt, there is still a new mass of raw material from which great riches can be obtained if the right mind and opportunity meet.