Today, my friend The Lord Jesus Christ Paul trundled into the Great Big Room Full of Many People Working, perched on my precarious desk, and asked if we’d seen the NYT article about First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, who wrote a 200+ page journal to his 9-month old son before dying in Iraq.
Paul then wondered aloud whether all these pixels are somehow less valuable than an honest-to-goodness, old-school journal. Because what’s more meaningful: A soldier’s painstakingly handwritten tribute to his son or a soldier’s not-as-painstakingly blogged tribute to his son? What happens when that electromagnetic pulse obliterates all our blogular musings? And, in an ironic twist, does that make electronic writing somehow even more delicate and fleeting than paper? Am I drawing with chalk?
I’m not sure it matters. Powerful, honest writing moves you despite the medium. Jordan King was given something precious. But I don’t know that it would be any less touching to read Sgt. King’s words in his own hand.
Neither am I sure that it doesn’t matter. Which is why I’m going to dust off the journal I kept since I was 15 but lazily abandoned about three years ago. You can’t blog everything. And you shouldn’t want to.
You can find more of the interesting word usements I structure* on Apple.com.
Read my article, Better Writing Through Design, on No. 242 of A List Apart.
Pick up issue 176 of .net magazine to read my thoughts on creating outstanding web copy.
Watch a video of the Design Eye for South By panel at SXSW Interactive 2008. Or view the slide deck at DesignEye.org.
*With apologies to Harris K. Telemacher.