... though not always kept.
Making a promise is one thing, keeping it another. If part of the promise of the
web was the possibility of what we've posted being viewed by the whole world,
the disappointment encountered when we realized that nobody was reading us could
often be quite real.
I raised this question from the floor at a presentation of the possibilities of
individual web sites for pupils quite a few years ago (when Netscape Gold was
a new product), and even reported on that presentation
a year and a half ago. I quite distinctly remember how the presenters at this
session tried to convince us that a personal web site was a wonderful thing for
a pupil, though they had no educational suggestions as to how such a site might
play a role in that pupil's learning process. At that presentation a friend and
I asked what a teacher should do if, after the pupils build their web sites, nobody
(except their parents) visits the site. The answer was quite simply to advise
the disappointed pupils to improve their sites.
It would seem to me that this is a problem inherent to cyberspace, and to the
blogosphere (not to mention to publishing) in general.
A great many people have established blogs expecting
to be discovered, only to realize that statistics are most definitely not
on their side.
Frankly, assuming that our chances of getting read aren't very great, it might
be advisable to add a disclaimer to sites that offer blogging tools - something
along the lines of:
Warning: You are probably writing only for yourself.
Any readership beyond your personal family and friends is totally accidental.
Go to: Not a new promise, or
Go to: How many prosumers can fit on the head of cyberspace?