Card’s Lesson on Blogging

From Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game:

“Peter took careful note of all their most memorable phrases and then did searches from time to time to find those phrases cropping up in other places.  Not all of them did, but most of them were repeated here and there, and some of them even showed up in the major debates on the prestige nets.  ‘We’re being read,’ Peter said.  ‘The ideas are seeping out’” (Card 135). 

I doubt blogs were popularized in 1985, if they even existed at all.  But that is exactly what Valentine and Peter are doing—they are blogging.  And not only are they blogging, they are being read and influencing the world.  The question it brings to my mind is this: we are blogging; can someone through blogging alone go from an insignificant nobody to someone read and respected?  The answer is yes, and it is kind of a scary thought.  As evinced in this case, these “well-respected bloggers” are only children!  Grant it, they are genius children, but it still can serve as a lesson for us, what do we really know about the things that are posted on the internet?  Very little. 

This quote is a lesson to us about what we are blogging, as we discussed earlier in the semester, anyone could be reading our blogs.  We could be influencing people, we have no idea.  But nonetheless, we need to reflect on what we are posting, before we post it.  Whether we are intentionally trying to change the world like Valentine and Peter or not, our blogs could still affect someone out there—our ideas could be “seeping out.”