A New (Scary) World

I mentioned in the first post that I love to write nearly everything. Nearly being the key word there. Despite my love of writing, I have actively resisted writing a blog. Until today obviously. I walked into my Honors Western Civilization class this morning to be told that a blog was an assignment for the course as we are going to be studying, not only history of civilization, but how we understand it through our modern digital technology and reversely how our history has created the technology today. So this blog will not really be a personal blog, in the typical sense. I will not be sharing date stories or post about an argument I have with a friend or roommate. While I am confident that what is occurring in my life and the emotions I am experiencing will no doubt influence my examination of certain topics and discussions, this blog is meant to be a forum for me to present and analyze ideas--first in this class and then beyond.

So, my reasons for resisting a blog: 1, I am a very private person and I am not sure I want anyone with access to the internet being able to read my thought and feelings, 2 I am still attached to paper, pens, libraries, and bookstores, and 3, I am not sure that I agree with the "new" idea that blogging is an acceptable format to truly discuss important ideas. Yes, I know many reading this will disagree, but hear me out. For problem 1, I intend to be careful in what information I disclose in the first place and write those more personal thoughts in my black book locked in a safe buried under my house. Problem 2- I am the kind of woman who writes thank-you cards by hand and mails them instead of an email or facebook post (though I use those mediums for other reasons). I prefer personal contact with those I talk to and discuss with. And I love the smell of a new book and the feeling of getting lost in row after row of books, partly because I love how personal that is. To address this issue, this blog will be personal in the sense that I will put a lot of myself emotionally into it (not personal details necessarily). I need to create a conversation, an interaction that makes this more than just a keyboard and screen in my room and imaginging you reading this wherever you are.


Now for the third problem, it actually brings me to a question. Is the internet and all the new digital tools a substitute for research, journal writing by hand, talking with our friends in person, etc? Or is it just another way to expand how we do those things? Yet, if you think the latter, do you not fear that it will become something more and create a detached impersonal lifestyle that we will pass onto our children? Who decided that computers could replace notes and letters? Or am I feeling as those people must have felt when they started writing oral traditonal stories down in ink? And maybe as those playwrights of old would feel if they knew we created reader's digest versions of their masterpieces? I guess I fear that we will not find a balance between the benefits of technology and the true need for more concrete human interaction. I fear that technology will snowball and we will forget the beauty of baling hay on the farm because we only read about it on someone else's blog. I fear that we will hestitate to try new things, sometimes scary things like parenthood, because we read all the material available on the internet and decide on that alone. As we discuss the Renaissance, or "rebirth", of the history books, could we not say that our digital age is the same thing? The challenge of old ideas and methods?

And it is up to us to decide how to learn and understand both.