# I've been thinking about this post from Brandon for almost a month now, about the notion of permanent writing as opposed to temporary writing.
One of the big issues/complaints with social media is its inherent temporality, how the streams flow so fast that everything gets washed away, forgotten, then we're on to the next thing. And the next. Ad infinitum.
Brandon notes that before social, before even blogs:
the writing on these websites seemed to be written as a permanent record. Every page was carefully planned, written out, and appropriately linked. Each page served a purpose (to pass along a specific set of information) and when put altogether the sum of those parts created this interlocking website
As blogs took over as the personal website style of choice, with the list of posts as the homepage, the emphasis on more permanent aspects of online writing was increasingly relegated to supporting cast at best, or forgotten altogether at worst.
Have we lost something by not writing pages and instead focusing on just simple posts?
But blogs and sites serve very different purposes. Blogs are much easier to write - truly personal blogs that is - and CMS's remove a lot of the legwork involved in online publishing. Blogs are an outpouring of thought, feeling, emotion, reaction, as much (or more) for the author than for the audience. They are slices of life that give an insight into the person creating them rather than being based on any specific topic.
Blogs definitely arent the place for more permanent writing. Yes, the posts are always there but discoverability is an issue once they disappear from the front page. In many cases they might as well not exist at all. We can create "featured posts" pages or a "required reading" list, we can be self-referential to the nth degree or create blog chains but the problem is as much one of distribution and consumption. We have to be realistic and accept that people don't follow links anymore.
We could argue that not posting to a blog, and so not having them distributed by RSS, or not sharing via social networks would change where and how people consume our writing but the web is a far larger place than it used to be and the likelihood of being read at all is infinitesimally small.
Sites, rather than blogs, still exist; in many instances blogs are just one link on a site's menu, but are sites the best way to present certain types of information? Did we create sites because that was the only thing we knew, the only thing that existed? The web evolved, technologies improved and new paradigms manifested; is it for the better? That depends on your point of view.
Billions can have a voice without knowing how to code but those same billions can fight, spread misinformation, harrass and abuse. Online anonymity can enable those in danger of persecution to speak up but it also removes accountability. Convenience trumps all but it leaves us with an unmanageable glut of information.
Perhaps we have lost something that made the web special in one particular way, we can lament that all we like but it was unsustainable. The nature of the web itself is temporal, a product of its time, an ever evolving tool whose purpose changes as often as its technologies. There is nothing that precludes us from using it in any way we see fit yet have to accept that things have changed.
From my own perspective I have totally embraced the temporality and ephemerality, the blog's design itself takes that almost to the extreme. Yet I constantly feel the need to create something more permanent, something more meaningful. I don't know what it will be (if it ever happens) but I know that it would be in a different format. In the meantime, the blog helps me express myself and connect with others, and for that I am eternally grateful.
Comments
Listening
I’m not being silent. I’m listening. It’s just that the listening requires me to be silent - Patrick Rhone
The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent' - Alfred Brende, via Amit Gawande
Listen to what? Everything that's going on in your life — all body, mind and soul.
...listening, really listening, means to awaken to life — all if it - Julian Summerhayes
# Got the car back this afternoon after having the insurance work done. Will (hopefully) be avoiding deer for a while.
# Liked: Colin Walker ponders the temporality of the modern … – Bix Dot Blog...
Bix mentions The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood from 2002. I keep seeing it referenced but have never read it. Intrigued, I just bought the Kindle version.
@colinwalker I recommend reading about Evergreen notes on Andy Matuschak's site or about Digital gardening.
It looks like a new movement to get some permanence into personal web publishing.
@muhh Thanks for those. Evergreen notes certainly look interesting.
@colinwalker That’s very interesting, as is the linked piece, and gives me some thoughts as to ways I might use my site. But this assertion:
seems a little sweeping. After all, if I hadn't followed the link to your post from Micro.blog, and from there to Brandon's post, I wouldn’t be here typing this reply now.
I do understand that what you're probably getting at is the apparent habit some people have of sharing a link without even reading it. But lots of us still follow lots of links.
@devilgate Agreed, it is an over-generalisation but it is common that many won't - not only not reading stuff before sharing but also not following links and references in things they do read.
Colin Walker ponders the temporality of the modern web, and I think it’s right that the matter isn’t so much of how anyone writes but on the likelihood of any given person being read. Quasi-permanent sites rather than frequently-updated blogs isn’t a thing that answers that question. When the web was young there was only so much to find, and the individual webpage therefore had an inherent sort of cachet. Having recently done a re-read of The Weblog Handbook I’d say that if nothing else people should read Rebecca Blood’s afterword, “Another Look Back and a Look Forward”, especially if you weren’t around for the beginning of the web and/or the advent of weblogs. It wouldn’t hurt also to read the first bit of of chapter one, “Weblogs Are Native to the Web”. That kind of web is gone, and I don’t think it much matters how we write and publish today so much as it maybe matters that we bother to write and publish at all.
Colin Walker ponders the temporality of the modern web, and I think it’s right that the matter isn’t so much of how anyone writes but on the likelihood of any given person being read. Quasi-permanent sites rather than frequently-updated blogs isn’t a thing that answers that question. When the web was young there was only so much to find, and the individual webpage therefore had an inherent sort of cachet. Having recently done a re-read of The Weblog Handbook I’d say that if nothing else people should read Rebecca Blood’s afterword, “Another Look Back and a Look Forward”, especially if you weren’t around for the beginning of the web and/or the advent of weblogs. It wouldn’t hurt also to read the first bit of of chapter one, “Weblogs Are Native to the Web”. That kind of web is gone, and I don’t think it much matters how we write and publish today so much as it maybe matters that we bother to write and publish at all.
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