Upon replying to a blog post on a friend’s private blog, I questioned why I did it, and then I questioned why I blog. The answer seems to be simple, but also a little complicated. The simple of it is that if I were to verbally reply to that friend’s post, what I said may be forgotten, or I may forget to say something, as things sometimes happen in conversation. I have been doing too much reading about STM, LTM and VLTM (Short, Long, Very Long Term Memory) lately to allow things to be only seen by such a delicate system, especially when there are so many things that can hinder it in the first place. I like for things to be recallable later. It is part of what is the basis for our collective global history. The written word survives in ways that nothing else can.

The complicated of why I write replies and why I write blog entries is so that they may be part of the human record. Anything that is known about anyone who is deceased is usually from their notes and diaries or from such articles of the people closest to them. Additionally, I like blogging because it is a written record for myself. I have already discovered the joy of needing to look something up that I had done previously, and then happily ran across a blog entry for it, although, it is rather odd to do a Google search and run across something you wrote yourself to answer your own question.

In short, conversations can be lost, but the written word is forever.