My OperaWhat will we be remembered by - our actions or our blogs?
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 12:20:50 AM
I had an interesting chat with a good friend and collegue of mine today. We were joking about turning senile as age set in, and we had both a number of stories about relatives and neighbours that had seen better days. One of the stories I recalled was told by my father. His grandmother had always been a vigorous and healthy woman that I suspect had been involved in and experienced a lot. But his strongest memory was of her as an old woman always asking for her walking stick; "Where is my walking stick? Where? I need to have my walking stick!"
To be honest - I can think of a better legacy to leave behind. As my friend commented - you can accomplish a lot in your life, but it are your final years that defines what you will be remembered as. I guess that is only lifes natural course, but it is a rather sobering thought.
Come to think of it - the only people we have biographies and indepth knowlegde of are people who either wrote diaries, letters or were directly involved with a lot of other persons. The stories and knowlegde of us "normal" people, living our mundane lifes and that at best will manage to get our 15 seconds of fame (the media reality is too fragmented to allow for 15 minutes of fame these days) will drown in all the other written and digitized medias that are out there.
That is - unless we do not do something that will make us visible for at least a few years to come. Like ... say ... write a blog? A blog is more durable than a twitter message, you have more control of it than if you write an article in a magazine, it will probably be stored in different backup-solutions and on sites like archive.org - and if handled correctly - perhaps be around for a decade or two. But one question that have arised a number of times among concerned historians is this: who is going to find the true information about influencal people from our time some time in the future. Who will read letters and get an understanding of the thoughts and ideas of people from our time.
It is a good question, and not one that is easy to answer. But if blogs - like for instance this one - are kept around and considered of historical importance, then we will perhaps manage to have one of the largest and best sources of biographical material ever amassed in the human history.
Of course - most blogs are written under a pseudonym, so knowing just which blog belongs to a certain person is probably close to impossible to decide exactly, but it is still a nobel thought. Well, at least I think so.
To be honest - I can think of a better legacy to leave behind. As my friend commented - you can accomplish a lot in your life, but it are your final years that defines what you will be remembered as. I guess that is only lifes natural course, but it is a rather sobering thought.
Come to think of it - the only people we have biographies and indepth knowlegde of are people who either wrote diaries, letters or were directly involved with a lot of other persons. The stories and knowlegde of us "normal" people, living our mundane lifes and that at best will manage to get our 15 seconds of fame (the media reality is too fragmented to allow for 15 minutes of fame these days) will drown in all the other written and digitized medias that are out there.
That is - unless we do not do something that will make us visible for at least a few years to come. Like ... say ... write a blog? A blog is more durable than a twitter message, you have more control of it than if you write an article in a magazine, it will probably be stored in different backup-solutions and on sites like archive.org - and if handled correctly - perhaps be around for a decade or two. But one question that have arised a number of times among concerned historians is this: who is going to find the true information about influencal people from our time some time in the future. Who will read letters and get an understanding of the thoughts and ideas of people from our time.
It is a good question, and not one that is easy to answer. But if blogs - like for instance this one - are kept around and considered of historical importance, then we will perhaps manage to have one of the largest and best sources of biographical material ever amassed in the human history.
Of course - most blogs are written under a pseudonym, so knowing just which blog belongs to a certain person is probably close to impossible to decide exactly, but it is still a nobel thought. Well, at least I think so.
