Grandmom was a Blogger

By kate on May 3rd, 2007

Before she died several years ago, my father’s mother, Grandmom, kept in touch with my parents by sending them cut-out newspaper articles she thought they’d find interesting. I remember my parents rolling their eyes good-naturedly as her cut-outs became more and more prolific.

Then, lately, I’ve noticed my parents doing the same thing, particularly my dad. He often cuts out articles from newspapers and magazines and saves them for me. I was reading the latest one, an interesting article from IEEE about the structure of consciousness, when something occurred to me.*

He and Grandmom clipping out articles to share is no different than my impulse to tell my friends about the clever website I just discovered. It is, essentially, blogging. Just because Grandmom didn’t own a computer doesn’t mean that our generation invented the need to share interesting stories. We’ve just improved the method, allowing for that same newspaper article to be shared with a large group rather than mailed to a single person.

This new way of looking at it gives me more respect for my dad and his cut-out articles. After all, he tends to choose really interesting articles. I bet he would have a good blog.

* This epiphany is actually related to the theory of strange loops in the linked article, which posits that a “strange loop” (system) can work with the same larger symbols, regardless of the underlying mechanism.