150,000,000 and one

Invited by a good friend, I wandered into a digital media seminar just in time to watch the speaker field questions from the audience. Someone asked about her perceived declining quality in written expression; how we are losing any sort of attention paid to grammar, spelling, etc. She asked the speaker if he thought that writing was likely to improve. In fact, he responded, in the short term he expects it to get worse. Right now we are inundated with volume. Volume without standards. But eventually the "cream will rise." Eventually being in "about two years." Though the claim sounded a bit arbitrary to me, what caught me off guard was the degree of volume, if one can use that expression. Anyway, the vastness of the volume. He chose to cite the number of blogs currently in existence. If he is to be believed, there are 150 million. That is roughly one for every 40 people on earth, and that includes everybody. People without electricity or running water--they are included in the 40. How is this possible?! Who reads all the entries? For the vast majority, the answer must be nobody. Indeed, at this point the only follower of my page is a test case created by me. It's an strange thing, to type out ones thoughts onto the internet only to have no one to read them. Perhaps most funny is that because of the content of the blog might be considered a bit libelous, it couldn't tolerate much fame at present. At the very least, I would be out a job and maybe facing a lawsuit.

I might be a bit demoralized were I not more clear in my goals. I am aware that the odds of a substantial online following are slim. I don't need a big readership. Perhaps I don't need any readership. I need the possibility of a few readers in order to motivate me to continue writing. If I need an audience or a potential audience in order to do something I would not do for myself is that ego? And where do I ultimately think this is all going? I would be lying if I wrote that I held out no hope that there wasn't a book in this. Or at the very least, that I might not have a book in me, with these fledgling and well-hidden pages just a small start.