Message in a Bottle?

Last night I cruised through some of the blogs on Christian Women Online and many other mom blogs and listings.

People want to be heard. Lots of people: 34.5 million bloggers worldwide according to 2005 statistics, all blogging their hearts out!

At one point during this surfing, I was struck by the sheer numbers of blogs and suddenly pictured them stuffed inside bottles, corked and floating in a virtual sea. Just like the song by the Police, "Message in a Bottle," where Sting hopes that someone gets his message in a bottle, then walks out one morning and can't believe what he sees--a hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore.

Maybe we're all just castaways, tossing out our ideas and thoughts in hopes that someone will get our message. Maybe everyone is scribbling, cramming, corking their messages and tossing them into the worldwide web...and no one is reading them.

Or maybe people are reading them...maybe there are twice as many readers as bloggers, and they really are making an impact. If so, it's a fascinating phenomenon. It's surely changing us in significant ways: language and vocabulary, the concept of publishing and readership, communication, transfer and cross-fertilization of ideas. All of that is evolving into something new. Highly intelligent people who have never published a book or magazine article are sharing their insights. Average Joes and Josephines with profound life stories can encourage the world.

Whether or not people are reading blogs, they do represent a new freedom of speech being exercised. How can we make the most of it--as readers and writers?