Digital durability (or, the perils of updating)

By the time you finish reading this post, it may already have changed.

Writing for digital has a lot of advantages. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s open to everyone. And, it’s very forgiving. Make a mistake? No problem. Just correct it, republish, and your work is instantly as good as new.

It’s that last part, however, that is somewhat troubling. I got into writing because, aside from the indescribable catharsis of expression, it offered something that few professions do: immortality. The ability to leave something tangible behind for future generations.

When you write for digital, however, you may not be leaving anything for next week, let alone next century.

Print can be lost or damaged, of course. Newspapers have always turned yellow with age. And unless you’re a hoarder, you probably don’t have stacks of old magazines lying around. But with print, you have a finality to writing. A product — your product — enshrined forever at a specific moment in time. Right or wrong, good or bad, there it is.

To a certain extent, yes, what gets put on the internet stays on the internet until the end of time. But pieces up there are much more transient, and much more fragile.

Take my (sometimes) day job at the Philadelphia Church Project. I recently completed a large-scale updating of over 100-plus entries. It was a much-needed project, as many of the entries hadn't been touched in years, and in some cases weren't only outdated, they were flat-out inaccurate.

In bringing everything up to code, however, I had to drastically revise or even delete years’ worth of work. Countless whole passages, some of them containing wonderful bits of writing and clever turns of phrase, erased from existence just like that. I will remember them, of course. But to anyone visiting my site, especially new visitors, it’s as if they never existed. Part of a legacy, wiped away with a click of the “save” button.

Don’t mistake me for a prematurely cranky old coot. I love digital. I love the flexibility, the ease, the convenience, and even the flexibility to correct mistakes and make updates. I love that my voice is free to be heard anywhere, with very few barriers to entry. I probably wouldn't be able to do what I do in a pre-internet world. And if a little fragility is the price I pay for that privilege, I suppose it’s worth it. I just have to accept that it’s a condition I, nor any writer, will probably ever be fully comfortable with.

Oh, in case you’re wondering if this post has changed: maybe it has, maybe it hasn't. You don’t know — and you never will.