Tag: history

Historical Reblogging

There’s a fascinating form of online narrative that’s emerged recently. For lack of a better term, I’ve taken to calling it historical reblogging.

Historical reblogging is the gradual publishing of historical texts online over a timeline that parallels the timeline of the texts. Specifically, date-specific artifacts such as letters and journals map wonderfully to the format of blogging. We’re used to seeing such collections all at once but in historical reblogging, items are revealed gradually, adding more authenticity to the stories.

I first came by this idea when involved with the Peace and War in the 20th Century project. Though I never saved them, I saw a number of archives that were blogging soldiers’ letters home. The idea began picking up steam for other archives too, such as The Orwell Diaries, which blogs George Orwell’s diary entries from [today minus 70 years]. Even microblogging got in on the action with one-sentence journals, such as those of Depression-Era farm girl Genevieve Spencer and a 99-year-old (in 1974) Great-Gram Pratt.

One of my favorite examples is the journals of Jordan Mechner, creator of the classic video game Prince of Persia. Last year, he began gradually posting his journals from 1985-1989, offering an intimate look into the development of his most famous game. When makes it fascinating is the familiarity with the people, games, and companies mentioned, but my familiarity is removed in the sense that they’re artifacts of the past (I was born in 1986). Reading these journals makes it that much more accessible. Anybody who has played Prince of Persia will feel a pang of excitement at seeing the original reference video for the protagonist’s movements, and reading about the subsequent attempts to digitize it and trace it in tiny 8-bit pixels.

Today’s blogs are yesterday’s journals. The only difference is that in the past, we only gained access to material once it had been bestowed some historical significance, always after the fact, and always at by the will of the gatekeepers. Today, with millions blogging, history is out there, right now, being made. One day, we’ll be visiting back to the teenage blogs of the next great artist and peering in at their beginnings. We just don’t see it yet.