Cycles of history

So, it turns out Rick Klau’s comment on Prof. Bailyn’s pamphleteering statements in Ideological Origins gets at something that Dan Bricklin talked about two years ago.  And Will Cox happened to recall, telling Rick about Dan’s previous comment.  On one level, this back and forth is mundane, I suppose.  But it’s also fascinating.  I’m constantly amazed by the extent to which people who blog do so self-consciously.  Not self-consciously as in “ohmygod what will she think about my outfit?” but self-consciously as in writers thinking about their craft as they do it.  Maybe that’s part of what’s fun about it — the freshness of the medium (more fresh for some of us than for others, who’ve been at it for longer) and the extent to which it’s still evolving and still being put to new uses.  Actually, newly being put to old uses, like political organizing.

Which is why I’m so pleased with today’s Gazette article.  This place has been around for a long time.  Lots of cool research has occurred over several centuries, on topics of so many sorts.  And yet there’s still a sense of wonderment about the *sheer possibilities* of a new medium — a new medium that can help us learn and share and think better.  Yeah, that does sound breathless and naive.  And maybe things won’t pan out for this Internet thing or this blogs thing.  But man, I’d hate to be anywhere but in this mix, trying to find out.