Meanwhile, as the insects endure, humans keep blathering -- and finding new and ever more independent ways to broadcast their blather. By comparison with some of these, editorials -- the anonymously authored opinions of official media organizations -- are as old as Mantophasmatodea. No, to approach the cutting edge in the opinion game these days, you have to carve out a niche in the "blogosphere."
Remember "Ender's Game," the 1985 cult science-fiction novel by Mr. Orson Scott Card? If so, you will recall how a couple of gifted children, a brother and sister frustrated by adults' failure to take them seriously, started publishing "on the nets" under the pseudonyms Locke and Demosthenes. They ended up changing the world. That's the spirit animating the blogosphere (the word comes from Weblogs, Internet sites launched by anyone with views to peddle). You may not be able to get space in The New York Times or Pravda, but you can get it on the Net, and if you are at all interesting, people will gather. According to a report in The Washington Post last week, www.InstaPundit.blogspot.com, a popular site launched eight months ago, recently recorded 49,663 visits on a single day. That's an audience by anyone's standards.
Blogging has been around for a while. Two and a half years ago, a Japan Times columnist already had it pegged as a potential "new media form of essay." The difference is that it is no longer marginal. Even mainstream print journalists now write Web-only columns as well. For many college-age kids, blogs are the only -- not just the first -- option for commentary.