The Longevity of Blogging OR How Gary Got Billed for a Salad

Sometimes we don't give the internet enought credit; like when we suddenly decided to remove the capitalization from its name.

By nature, the internet--as an electronic medium--is rather similar to broadcast: information is there and then seems gone in a split second. It's "streaming" and designed to be something extremely quick and evolving. Often, we use it to discover information NOW and to find out what's NEW.

On a popular level, the internet is more about immediacy than documentation. I don't put something on the web with an expectation to come back years later to see it again. Likewise, I rarely go searching online to see what someone wrote a few years ago when they might still be writing today.

But what about blogs? Are they not journals? Don't we put our thoughts in them to document our days? I would argue "no." Rather, they are more like telephone conversations--brief daily or weekly updates on what's going on in our lives. I write to express something and you pop by to see the latest update. It's all about the update and not what I wrote in May. When was the last time you did a backward search on a blog?

Which brings me to the humour and surprise we all experience when something we did on the internet months or years ago is suddenly brought to our attention (and to our embarrassment).

Take, for example, the meeting I had a few months ago with a new client who likes to do their research. After a google image search for "Daorcey Le Bray" she finds this:

Classy.

In a similar story (and the point of this blog entry), our friend and favourite photographer Gary Milner published a blog entry on January 14, 2004 about a situation where he was doing an assignment for the Gauntlet (under Natalie's direction, I believe) ( Yup, I think I maybe told Beauchamp and Gary that there would be food there so I could entice them.) covering a presentation at the Palliser Hotel sponsored by the Canadian Club of Calgary. In short, he ended up stealing a salad. At this point, I recommend reading the actual entry.

So now, almost two years later, a member of the Canadian Club of Calgary and co-worker of mine stumbles across Gary's blog (through a google search?). And so the joke begins...

... the punchline came today with an "official" invoice to Mr. Milner from the Canadian Club of Calgary for the cost of the salad he stole: $5.34. It was attached to an "official" e-mail from the Vice-President of the Club:

Dear Mr. Milner,
One of our members recently read a copy of an article you wrote in which you bragged about stealing one of our salads.
Needless to say we are not amused and expect payment of the attached invoice forthwith.
Failure to address this matter in a reasonable timeframe will result in further action being taken.
Sincerely,

I guess it just makes me laugh. It's a small world, I guess. Made even smaller by the internet.

And if you want a moral to the story, I suspect it's that we shouldn't take the longevity of the internet for granted. Every time you and I write something, it's copied and stored and can be "somewhere" for a very long time. Fortunately for Gary, his story about the salad and the resulting invoice are all in good fun. The jury is still out on that picture of me with a gun.

Good grief.