Blogger, by Terry Freedman
One of the reasons I keep a blog is that it is still a great way of finding out what I think about things. This is not original, of course. In one of Calvino’s essays he sets out his reasons for writing, which include the memorable observation that it helps him learn something he doesn’t yet know, or replace something he has written already.
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In his book Social Media for Academics (Amazon affiliate link), Mark Carrigan quotes the philospher Daniel Little:
“The blog is an experiment in writing a book, one idea at a time.”
With that in mind, three of the benefits I personally derive from blogging, and in particular from keeping old blog posts unchanged, is that:
(a) they serve as a reminder of what I was thinking, and what I was thinking about;
(b) by the same token they enable me to see how my thoughts on certain issues may have changed over the years;
(c) a big problem in all fields is that collective memory tends to disappear: I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve clicked on a link to what was once a great resource or opinion piece, only to find that it has disappeared. By keeping my blog posts unchanged, I am playing a small part in maintaining a repository of thought.
This is why I’ve been publishing old issues of my newsletter, Computers in Classrooms, as it was then called back in the year 2000 (for subscribers to my newsletter, Digital Education. The very name tells you something: back then, a school was considered at the cutting edge of education technology if it not only had a computer lab, but — gasp! — at least one computer in each classroom as well.
Look at this screenshot of an article from the very first issue of Computers in Classrooms, which was published on 3rd April 2000:
Screenshot of an article in Computers in Classrooms
The article itself is interesting, not least because it refers to the education technology situation in the 1980s. But also look at the formatting: completely text-based. I think it is important to remember these small things, even though I cannot properly articulate why.
When I revisit an article to see if it needs updating, I make a copy of it and update the copy, and on the original I provide a link to the updated version (most of the time). The only time I rewrite history, so to speak, is if I discover I’ve made a factual error.