I often wonder how the bloggers do it. For many years I've been fundamentally opposed to the idea of blogging both for myself as someone who likes to write, and as a reader. I guess the blogging world is changing, but when I first learned about blogs back in the old days, it often seemed like a way for the blogger to be passively aggressive without actually confronting anyone about their problems in real life. For instance, if they knew that all their friends read their blog, they could drop hints or secret messages to be (usually) misinterpreted by their peers. I found this very troubling as I was sometimes the subject of aggression (or so it seemed to me) in one such blog. It was completely lame and hurtful.
I think if it hadn't been for my prior experience, I would have gotten into blogging full tilt and would probably write verbose, detailed accounts of my life every day, instead of irregularly like I do on this site. I'm lucky enough to have excellent friends who hear me out and give me feedback on my thoughts and ideas. But you know, I'm always torn about publishing stuff on the web or in any public forum. It's that struggle between wanting to express thoughts and feelings, and wanting privacy and anonymity in this crazy world. Who might be reading this? Are you my future boss, wife, stalker? Part of me hopes so, and another part of me hopes not. I'm not really ashamed of anything that I care to express. I don't plan on becoming a celebrity, and quite frankly if anyone cares about what I write enough to be upset about it, then I would probably think that's rather amusing anyway. But history has shown that I've never really entered the world of the blogger for one reason or another. My online presence is limited to occasional writings, songs and reports of interesting projects that I've done.
Also, you'll notice that unlike a blog I don't have any comment capabilities on my site. That's because my site isn't a forum. I definitely encourage feedback through email, but I don't really care to host your rants and raves on my site or have other people read what you think about my writings. I guess that's probably old fashioned or anti-interactive, but it suits me just fine. It's not that I'm afraid of what people will say publicly on my site, or don't feel like moderating comments. I think it's more of the fact that I really don't care what others might say. The reason that I have a website is to have a public outlet and share ideas, not to be an interactive portal. Does that mean that I'm selfish? I certainly hope not.
You know, I go through long phases where I don't update my website and don't feel like adding my writings to my site. I do write things regularly and nearly always write in an HTML file that I edit directly in my offline web directory. (which gets sync'd to my server with a script) But it seems that these days most of these files never end up on the web. By the time I'm finished editing them they feel too personal or too private to share online. So I just move them into a private place in my home directory never to be seen by anyone, and certainly to be long forgotten by even myself.
It's that idea of privacy that I value more and more as time goes on. As we have so much technology to allow us to stay in touch, communicate, publish, tell our friends about our every action, post pictures to the web within seconds of taking them, and share our deepest thoughts even just by talking into our webcams and not really writing anything, I find myself wanting to go in a different direction. To be private.
Some people never got on the web at all... even people my age who were exactly the right age to explore themselves by starting an angsty website in their late teens when HTML was new and animated GIFs were still cool. Maybe those people were right all along. I mean, imagine reading archives of your own blog from when you were a frustrated teenager years later when you're grown up and mature. Maybe it would just be humourous and not really disturbing or embarrassing. But I can't think that it would ever be prize-winning literature that you'd really want to keep, or even allow people to still have access to. If anything you probably hope that as you mature and change, your online persona matures along with you, leaving the old stuff to magically vanish just like our immature personalities fade over time. Gone but maybe not completely forgotten. But that's not necessarily what happens on the web. Stuff can hang around for a long time. We can lose access to sites or forget passwords. Archives can get created automatically which preserve our obsolete emotional rants forever.
Perhaps we've not really figured out what this crazy internet is all about yet. With possibility comes responsibility. Certainly as I get older I find myself looking differently at technology and its capability to help or hinder us. I'm definitely a proponent of change, and like to try new things and support new ideas and ways of thinking. But I'm starting to realize that every new concept is something to be explored with an open mind, and then later treated as a tool to be put to the correct use. For me, my website has become somewhat of a portfolio, a living bio and a sort of archive of ideas and experiences. I edit old articles to make them relevant or provide historical context, but I save the essence of things which are obsolete but should be preserved.
We are all beginning to appreciate the importance and longevity of the web and what it can do for us as a global society. Now more than ever I think it's important to really think about what it means to publish on the web and how it will be interpreted not only today but far into the future.
