Glen Reynolds, of Instapundit fame, posted a link to this article at Global Voices.

I find it interesting, becuase it highlights something about the spirit of blogging. Or at least what it has become for many people. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of popular blogs out there are politically oriented sites. As a matter of fact, head over to the Truth Laid Bear and check out the top sites for yourself. I guess what I'm saying is that American bloggers have always been proud of the political power a blog or group of bloggers can harness - just ask Dan Rather, the first person to ever lose his job because of a blogger (as opposed to losing your job because you blog).

Well, this blurb points out that blogging is starting to light fires not just in the States, but in other Internet-embracing nations. It's enbaling not only one's freedom of speech, but allows people to gain massive exposure - worldwide in this case. I mean, how many people hit Glen's site everyday? 170-200 thousand? Every day. And this article got that kind of exposure. Blogging is wack. When people consider the real benefits of the Internet, I'd say one of the top two would have to be communication/freedom of information (the second probably being commerce). But this is what people really mean when they talk about the Internet - the ability to not only say it to everyone, but for anyone to have the ability to hear it and pass it on.

Another thing that presents a completely new issue is tackling how blogging brings us together, if at all. Take for instance, Paul and me. I've never met Paul, never seen a photo of the guy, never even talked to him on the phone. But here we are running this site together. My brother, who doesn't really follow the blogosphere, asked "So do you know this guy?" Technically, I guess I don't know Paul because I wouldn't be able to pick him out of a lineup. But we communicate on a fairly regular basis, and I know things about Paul that probably most people who could pick him out of a lineup would know. So, maybe my brother was using the word "know" in the pre-Information Age sense of the word. Becuase now, in the days of free instant international communication, we can know people without ever knowing who they are. This same concept applies to all the bloggers in the blogroll on the right whom I know but don't know; and who know me without knowing who I am.

Fucking odd huh?

Ancilliary to this relationship peice are the problems resulting from the inability to create tone and inflection in text-based conversations. A great illustration of said problem can be found in the comments here, wherein I think I'm alluding to a long-running joke when I'm actually pissing someone off. I completely failed to correctly inflect or create context, mostly because I couldn't use my voice to intone the remark.

So the Internet allows me to communicate with people all over the globe, contact people in a way that, formerly, was only possible by actually seeing them. Unfortunately in the end, not only do I not know who they are, but I've probably spent half of the time pissing them off.