There are about four different places I have written extensively in the last few years. Four websites, I mean. I imagine some day, once I’m long dead, some kid is going to want to do a history paper on me but there will be no journal, no diary that he can tap into to learn my inner-most thoughts. No, instead he’ll have to scour the internet for all of those scattered blogs, web journals and art sites in order to piece together how I viewed life as an angsty teenager-slash-twenty-something.

The lack of written words is something I think future generations will lament about ours. Someday, all of our hard drives will be rusted to crap and the thousands and millions and billions of words that are stored digitally will be gone forever. I suppose paper has a tendency to decay even more than magnetic disks, but there’s just something about leaving behind a leather-bound manuscript of my life that Microsoft Word or Myspace just can’t compete with.

I guess it’s slightly ironic that I am using a blog to grieve the shift in paradigm from paper to digital. I suppose if I weren’t such a blatant hypocrite, I would be writing these words down in a journal somewhere. But the honest truth is that this is just plain easier. I can type almost three times faster than I can write by hand and this way I am able to avoid those annoying wrist cramps. The convenience of word processing is undeniable, and yet I can’t help but think that the world is worse off for the lack of actual substance.

At any rate, there is no mind-breaking take-away. I was just up a little late thinking about how interesting it would be to go forward in time and watch as someone tried to do a research paper on my life. I’m sure they’ll just re-write whatever it’ll say on my Wikipedia, just like every other paper-writing student does today.

Oh the marvels of immediate digital publishing.