David Brooks' latest column in the New York Times begins like this:
Everything becomes a shorter version of itself. Essays become op-eds. Op-eds become blog posts. Blog posts become Twitter tweets. The Sidney Awards stand athwart technology, yelling stop. They are awarded every year to some of the best examples of long-form journalism and thought.
I do realize the irony of writing about this in a blog post (at least it is not on twitter...), but for someone who is not a journalist, there are obvious benefits to blogging - more than one person can read my thoughts (whether anyone would actually want to is a totally different story). These lines seemed particularly salient to me because of the book I have been reading recently - Team of Rivals, about Abraham Lincoln's life, politics, and rivals. This book has been providing me with a much needed refresher history course and a glimpse of the political genius that was Lincoln. Yet, something that has stood out to me is how much history of this period derives from hand-written letters between leading figures (and their wives) of the time. It makes me somewhat sad to think that the history of today will be derived from e-mail. While e-mail serves many purposes, it lacks the beauty and weight that often is intrinsically present in written letters. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic and a traditionalist, but I don't see that as a bad thing.
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