Anyone who has had a blog for a while will be aware of just how short our memories are. When the same old question comes back around again — there is a kind of blog cycle — it is rare for one of us to say, “Oh, I remember a great post about that two or three years ago.” Blogs are ephemeral. Blog posts do not endure. Even if you keep a full archive of everything you have ever posted, the vast majority of your posts, the great bulk of activity, 99% of your output evaporates from consciousness. Here today, gone tomorrow.
via NT Blog.
I imagine that is going to be Dr. Goodacre’s paper which he will present. Now, I don’t want to get in a public disagreement with Dr. Goodacre, but he’s plainly, and seriously wrong.
His podcasts are used in many seminaries and I’ve watched them change the opinions of students in several of my classes. Further, the blogs of Kurk Gayle, James McGrath, and a few others have so changed me that to call them ephemeral or somehow not enduring is near blasphemy. Because of several of the bloggers which I read, and I won’t go into every blog and every blog post, I was able to escape a startling change of belief systems without becoming a militant atheist and the such. Further, several of them have enriched me theologically, spiritually, and intellectually. Dr. Goodacre’s blog and a few others will survive long after he thinks that he has deleted his blog. So, I disagree with him here.
By the way – read the entire paper. Good advice.
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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Since you have such a high view of blogging it gives me hope that you’ll be converted to a biblical Fundamentalism
After all, when I do post, it is of great substance
Wait? I thought I was a Scriptural believer?
Wait? On what? Whom? For how long?
Seriously, I hope you enjoy yourself over there.
On everything – I just happen to like to hear the authors speak
[...] via tcojc [...]
I agree with your disagreement. My older posts may not all be in my memory, but they are in Google’s, and some of them continue to receive significant traffic. For example, my 2007 post The Maltese Cross, or the Christian one? has been viewed 431 times already this year. Not exactly “gone tomorrow”.
Agreed. I still remember, and keep tucked away, posts from others which have made it into my memory. I have some printed, or saved to pdf, so they aren’t going anywhere!
I think you’re wrong. People who collect/save blog posts are unusual/rare. Most people do not. Whilst you might be able to find it again using google.. it’s sometimes too much effort.. I reckon out of say, 10000 posts and 100000 page views, you’re talking a handful of saved posts.. and I mean.. handful.
But, a handful matter, right?