There's this quote from Kundera's The unbearable lightness of being. Perhaps it makes sense in this context.

    We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to
    the kind of look we wish to live under.  
    The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other
    words, for the look of the public. That is the case with the German singer, the American
    actress, and even the tall, stooped editor with the big chin. He was accustomed to his
    readers, and when one day the Russians banned his newspaper, he had the feeling
    that the atmosphere was suddenly a hundred times thinner. Nothing could replace the
    look of unknown eyes. He thought he would suffocate. Then one day he realized that
    he was constantly being followed, bugged, and surreptitiously photographed in the
    street. Suddenly he had anonymous eyes on him and he could breathe again! He
    began making theatrical speeches to the microphones in his wall. In the police, he had
    found his lost public.  
    The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by
    many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are
    happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the
    feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all
    of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always
    come up with the eyes they need. Marie-Claude and her daughter belong in the second
    category.   
    Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly
    before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation
    of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the
    room will go dark. Tereza and Tomas belong in the third category.   
    And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the
    imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers. Franz, for
    example. He traveled to the borders of Cambodia only for Sabina. As the bus bumped
    along the Thai road, he could feel her eyes fixed on him in a long stare.

From the comments I get on my blog (shameful plug, I run Remarkbox, hosted comments for static sites) I know I have changed the world, if at least just a bit.

I write primarily for myself, but I do put my words into a form that others could digest, understand, and learn from.

The words on my blog may be the butterfly flapping her wings.

I do not and likely cannot measure how much my writing changes the world and trying to do so often discouraged me from writing. Do book authors really know how much their work changes the world? To me, it seems like an infinitely complex relationship.

I can tell you I have saved many people time on their research and learning and I'm sure I've swayed some to think differently, more like me.

My blog is the storm, ans is cast out to the world and left to chaos and entropy to find who it must.

Links in my profile.