Blogs: Servant, Master, Or Free Mouthpiece?

I am now a veteran of fifty or so blog posts, but like all the rest of you, I have cogitated for years, which for me is generations. I have thought and written about my various opinions, and about all the wisdom which must have been repeatedly worked out and then lost again throughout the millennia. In light of this, I am impressed beyond words (well, almost) by the arrival of this form of communication called the blog, which, at the very least, equals the invention of the printing press. Read that, and remember that it is coming from one (me) who is regarded (by me and others) as glum and difficult where words are concerned, and generally not inclined to be effusive.

Blogs are wonderful. Vanity is served at once. If you don't listen, it is your fault. Also, by the very nature of the medium, your audience sorts itself out. Readers don't pay anything, so they really can't complain. Anyone can join in, rebut, whatever -- surely this is democracy, whatever that is, at its most lively and pushy. In the realm of human communication, blogs seem to me to be the atomic units that transistors are in the world of digital devices that surround us.

Having said all this, I am careful, questioning, and a little frightened about the future. I do not think that we, with our unique facility of language, are to be trusted with much. But at the same time, I don't want to stop the momentum of whatever it is that will emerge from the tunnel. Stay tuned.