Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Millions of pairs of eyes

It's probably been said before, but what strikes me over and over is how the web enables us to see the world through so many different sets of eyes. Technorati tracks over 7.5 million blogs. Google index over 3 billion web pages. Does this make us more tolerant? I regret that I haven't noticed any such effect. But I still like to think that the fact that there are so many people whose perceptions are available will make a difference.

In the past, it wasn't all that easy to find other ways of looking at things. Books were one. Corporate and political media were others. And for sure there were plenty of both. But now, each individual has an opportunity to let the rest of the world know how things look from his or her perspective. Perhaps no one cares. But still, the fact that those perspectives are out there, that there are so many people who are converting their experiences into a form that others can share — one would think that it must make some sort of difference.

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