Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Inheriting The Genetic Material



The stuff of Sepia Saturday is not just old family photographs : it is old photographs of all kinds. Over the last 99 weeks many people have used old postcards as the starting point for their Sepia Saturday musings - and they have always proved to be particularly effective prompts. As I have said many times before, there is a particular affinity between postcards and blogging : the people who sent those pictorial messages one hundred years ago were undoubtedly made of the same genetic material as todays' bloggers. That need to send a message out into the world, to contact people from far away, to share thoughts, ideas and sights - all these are the common currency of the Edwardian postcard sender and the twenty-first century blogger. 

All we can hope is that the blog posts of today are as sturdy and capable of withstanding the test of time as those old pastecard offerings. All we can hope is that in 100 years time there is a new generation of bloggers (or whatever medium has inherited the genetic material) gathering together every Saturday to share the thoughts and the images of the blogging pioneers.

DON'T FORGET IT IS SEPIA SATURDAY 100 THIS SATURDAY. PLEASE VISIT THE SEPIA SATURDAY BLOG TO JOIN IN THE CELEBRATIONS

18 comments:

  1. Ah Harrogate! Despite being rather 'Posh' I Love the town.
    Talking of inherited material' I Wonder......Shall we Be Getting a Telegram from The Queen for our 100th Birthday?

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  2. Netherby Hall I've never seen
    Though I be a gypsy queen

    What an enigmatic message!

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  3. Tony : I certainly hope so - or maybe it will be a picture of her great grandma.
    Brett : See http://newsfromnowhere1948.blogspot.com/2011/03/in-memory-of-lady-hermoine-and-dark-red.html

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  4. Not sure if blog posts will stand the test of time or not, after all the internet just has to go poof and there they go.

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  5. Anonymous12:31 PM

    Nice look see and very good information on them. Not sure that blogging will last as the medium changes with technology. The waste bins are filled with past technology that ran out of style.

    But the idea of blogging is good. I am sure there are ways to present a journal of one's life that is not only simpler but easier. I just haven't found it yet.

    I just can't imagine looking at this blog post in the year 2050, for example. I won't be here then but those that are will surely be looking at something totally different.

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  6. Thanks for the explanation of the message Alan; it had me guessing too. I don’t think we’ll be blogging in the future; it’ll be something else even more wonderful. I do, however, think we’ll still be enjoying the printed page. Look how many people who blog, also publish on paper. I know you’ve published some blogs, and now I’m being urged to lay some family memories down in hard copy too. I may be after you for advice on that one.

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  7. Strange... I can click on your blog homepage, but not this individual post. It's not hypertext in my own blogroll, yet all the others are.

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  8. CB : If you mean the link to the Netherby Hall story it is not hypertexted because I can't work how to embed a link into a comment. You will just have to do what you used to do before we had running electricity and cut and paste.

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  9. I have never been to Harrogate... isn't that disgraceful?

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  10. I'm working on it. I'm trying very hard to be able to join in :)

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  11. When people bemoan the "influence of the internet" on literacy, etc., I often think of the mail services at the turn of the 20th century. I seem to think there were 4 collections/deliveries a day or something like that in the UK. Post in those days (quick, dashed off messages) was more like email today than contemporary letter writing.

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  12. Thank you Alan. Embedding a link is veryy simple: {a href="URL"}Text{/a}
    Replace the curly brackets {} with <>, and the URL and Text with your choice, and hey presto.

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  13. Been to Harrogate once. Thanks for the postcard!

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  14. I love how you make the connection between postcards and blogging. Those little triangles often contained wonderfully concise information. They were maybe quite similar to tweeting and the 140, also. This does make one wonder what the future holds for those who wish to "send a message out into the world."

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  15. I think I would have liked the writer of that postcard.

    An old lady said to me recently, "I don't like email. You can't touch it. I want something I can hold in my hands."

    I think whatever form blogging may take in 100 years, we'll still want books and postcards. I hope.

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  16. Have to say that this picture of Harrogate is wonderful. At first I thought it must be somewhere in the Indian Raj or something :) (I mean before I took a closer look).

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  17. A lovely postcard & a lovely post--happy 100th Sepia Saturday!

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  18. Enjoyed following the links to the poetic post.

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