Was that the web that was?

Part of the reason why I increas­ingly feel that I’m not cut out for work­ing in new media and on the web — and pos­sibly not even suited to writ­ing on the web as a pas­time, in the form you see here — is because I can’t help view­ing it as a tran­si­ent medium. Not in the sense that it’s going to dis­ap­pear tomor­row as we sud­denly decide that it was all a passing fad, but because the words that are placed on web pages just don’t feel per­man­ent. It’s all about update, update, update. Churn the con­tent. Archive the old and bring on the new. This page last updated ten minutes ago, four hours ago, two days ago.

Yes, I know that archives exist, but archives are invari­ably dusty, filled with cob­webs and vir­tu­ally unin­hab­ited. We all want the here and now, par­tic­u­larly when we’re online.

If the web had been around when I was in my early twen­ties, or if I were in my early twen­ties today, I would prob­ably rel­ish those same aspects I’m busily decry­ing now. Fast-moving, change­able, con­stantly evolving, high speed, excit­ing. Give me, give me, give me that instant gratification.

How times change. Or is it a case of how age changes me?

There comes a stage in life where you can’t help but think about whether you’re mak­ing a mark on the world, whether there’s any­thing to show for your exist­ence and your day-to-day efforts — how­ever tiny and insig­ni­fic­ant that imprint may be. No mat­ter what I write or pro­duce on the web, I just don’t feel that imprint. I don’t see any foot­prints in the sand when I turn and look back at where I’ve come from or what I’ve done. There’s noth­ing tan­gible about it.

This isn’t a cri­ti­cism of the inter­net, or a cri­ti­cism of those people who pro­duce great work for this vir­tual medium; this is just some garbled attempt at explain­ing how I’ve been think­ing in recent weeks and months.

Navel-gazing web­log writer announces pre­ma­ture death of inter­net. World sighs and declares itself dis­tinctly unimpressed.