This post was originally published in February of 2015 on another platform:
After nearly a year of doing nothing with this site, and continuing to be unhappy with the old bhaven.org site I went back to look at this SharePoint site again and remembered why I tried it out in the first place. A static website has little appeal. At work I've heard websites referred to as a "legacy platform" meaning the old way of doing things. It maybe so. I do participate in social media (FB, Twitter, etc.) except the content there is ephemeral. There is little to no constancy. I don't think a website is much better, but at least there is no technical objection to longer form and the data stays in place for as long as you leave it there and pay the host site provider.
The idea of old media is an interesting one. Five of our children made a choice to serve as missionaries for our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. For the girls this meant 18 months of almost no direct contact. For the boys it meant the same for 24 months. Before each of them left I asked them how they wanted me to write to them. I gave them the choice of either an email or a physical paper letter. Every one of them chose snail mail. You should understand that these kids are plugged in. They have been online their entire lives. They are digital natives in the truest sense. Yet, when they were going to be away and longing for a touch of home, they wanted something to show up in a physical mailbox. Each week my wife and I would set at a computer, type out our message from home, hit print, sign the letter, then stick it in an envelope and drop it in the mailbox for the postman.
This past week I was attending a conference for the North America Broadcasters Association in Toronto, Canada. Interestingly, in the conference bag that showed up at my hotel room I found a nice leather-bound 2015 journal. It has lined pages for writing and each page is marked at the top with an individual date, one for each day of the year.
One other experience I have related to this cross-media trend. I read books. I have lots of them I have read, and plenty yet to be perused. I also have commute time each day. Some years ago I got in the habit of downloading audio books and listening to them during my commute time. I still do. Interestingly I have generally listened to audio books that I have a physical copy of. If I don't have a physical copy, then before I finish listening I often buy a physical copy and put it on the shelf. I'm using the more modern act of listening to an MP3 or MP4 version, yet I still find myself wanting the good old fashioned version with words written on paper. I do actually read some books if they are for school or if I can't find an audio book version. In my post-graduate classes students can opt to download the digital versions of text books. Many take that option, but not all.
I'm not sure what it is that keeps us tied to older forms of media. Maybe it feels somewhat more permanent. I don't know. Much of the theme of the Toronto conference was about where the media of radio is going. We heard how online tools such as podcasts are threatening radio listenership. It's not new. Every time some new medium comes along the others feel threatened. Yet in this day of television, movies, video streams, etc. the theaters are still open on Broadway. We can stream all sorts of music, yet live concerts are still common place. Don't get me wrong. Ever-growing media options to those of us who consume it will likely mean smaller slices of the pie for each of the disparate media. It can be argued whether new media are growing the content distribution pie, or simply carving the pie into ever smaller pieces. It does seem, however, that old media stays with us in some evolved state regardless. Be it our need for the familiar, nostalgia, or a perspective of the quaintness of it, old media somehow continues to stick around.
After nearly a year of doing nothing with this site, and continuing to be unhappy with the old bhaven.org site I went back to look at this SharePoint site again and remembered why I tried it out in the first place. A static website has little appeal. At work I've heard websites referred to as a "legacy platform" meaning the old way of doing things. It maybe so. I do participate in social media (FB, Twitter, etc.) except the content there is ephemeral. There is little to no constancy. I don't think a website is much better, but at least there is no technical objection to longer form and the data stays in place for as long as you leave it there and pay the host site provider.
The idea of old media is an interesting one. Five of our children made a choice to serve as missionaries for our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. For the girls this meant 18 months of almost no direct contact. For the boys it meant the same for 24 months. Before each of them left I asked them how they wanted me to write to them. I gave them the choice of either an email or a physical paper letter. Every one of them chose snail mail. You should understand that these kids are plugged in. They have been online their entire lives. They are digital natives in the truest sense. Yet, when they were going to be away and longing for a touch of home, they wanted something to show up in a physical mailbox. Each week my wife and I would set at a computer, type out our message from home, hit print, sign the letter, then stick it in an envelope and drop it in the mailbox for the postman.
This past week I was attending a conference for the North America Broadcasters Association in Toronto, Canada. Interestingly, in the conference bag that showed up at my hotel room I found a nice leather-bound 2015 journal. It has lined pages for writing and each page is marked at the top with an individual date, one for each day of the year.
One other experience I have related to this cross-media trend. I read books. I have lots of them I have read, and plenty yet to be perused. I also have commute time each day. Some years ago I got in the habit of downloading audio books and listening to them during my commute time. I still do. Interestingly I have generally listened to audio books that I have a physical copy of. If I don't have a physical copy, then before I finish listening I often buy a physical copy and put it on the shelf. I'm using the more modern act of listening to an MP3 or MP4 version, yet I still find myself wanting the good old fashioned version with words written on paper. I do actually read some books if they are for school or if I can't find an audio book version. In my post-graduate classes students can opt to download the digital versions of text books. Many take that option, but not all.
I'm not sure what it is that keeps us tied to older forms of media. Maybe it feels somewhat more permanent. I don't know. Much of the theme of the Toronto conference was about where the media of radio is going. We heard how online tools such as podcasts are threatening radio listenership. It's not new. Every time some new medium comes along the others feel threatened. Yet in this day of television, movies, video streams, etc. the theaters are still open on Broadway. We can stream all sorts of music, yet live concerts are still common place. Don't get me wrong. Ever-growing media options to those of us who consume it will likely mean smaller slices of the pie for each of the disparate media. It can be argued whether new media are growing the content distribution pie, or simply carving the pie into ever smaller pieces. It does seem, however, that old media stays with us in some evolved state regardless. Be it our need for the familiar, nostalgia, or a perspective of the quaintness of it, old media somehow continues to stick around.
RSS Feed