The purpose of writing is to stimulate thought and generate experience in the mind of a reader. The purpose of writing and reading is to produce psychic change.

The Internet facilitates this process. Writing on the Internet does not allow for the possibility of an ending. One thing leads to another. Scholarship flows.

Nicholas Carr notes (2010) that a printed book is “a finished object.” Once inked onto the page, its “words become indelible.” The finality of the act of publishing has instilled in the best writers a desire to perfect the works they produce—to write with an “eye and an ear toward eternity.”

In the digital or Internet world, however, publication is an “ongoing process rather than a discrete event.” Writing on the Internet, the idea of “eternity” melts into the background.

One writes to have an impact: to be heard, to convey ideas, and to generate psychic and cultural change.

Psychic and cultural change occur gradually. Significant ideas must be assimilated within each individual. An author produces a version of truth so that the reader may develop his or her own version of the truth.