trees are people too

Adrian posed the question of where does our blog begin, and where does it end?

Does it begin as we conceive it? As we type it? Only when someone reads it?

Does it end when they stop reading? Or perhaps when they turn the screen off, or move to another page? Does it finish only when it is deleted, any electronic echo of it is removed from cyberspace?

The only way I can get my head around this question is to return to the book vs blog context, and try and compare them. I can see where a book begins and ends. It has a cover, indicating where it starts, and a final page, indicating a conclusion. But the blog has neither. It has a ‘home’ page, something of an anchor to attach the rest of the information to, but this home page is transient, fluid, impermanent. It has no end, as it can be digested in any order, and is often constantly being updated to include more info, thus changing where any end would be.

So the physical properties, while obvious, are not helping me define parameters. The beginning and end of the blog is more visceral, more conceptual than actual (duh?). You could argue it only begins (aka exists) when someone reads it, is engaging with the content. As soon as they stop, the blog itself also ceases to exist (somewhat existential?).

The blog cannot be captured, cannot be frozen, encapsulated, framed unchanging. I guess one could try to document it, but as Adrian pointed out, then it ceases to become a ‘blog’, its qualities become that of print. As a transient object, it literally exists in a single form only to the reader, and as such its attributes are constantly changing accordingly, not just with different views, viewers and their individual nuances, but also in response to the technology which it relies on, constantly changing and defining it.

Does your blog end when your computer crashes? And is there a right answer to this question?

These are only my initial musings, and I am far from philosophic, but my current consensus is that the blog begins and ends with the viewer (one or many). Without their attention, the blog may still exist in form, but ceases to be a ‘blog’ as we have defined it.